Tips to Get Your WordPress Blog to the Top of the Search Engines

September 8, 2009 · Filed Under google, keywords, Matt Cutts, On Page SEO, Wordpress · 2 Comments 

Recently, I came across a post at Search Engine Land which had a video of Matt Cutts speaking at WordCamp which is a conference that focuses on everything about WordPress.

During this talk (which runs around 45 minutes), Matt revealed some very interesting facts and ideas about SEO which I found…well…enlightening as I’m sure you will too.

If you do have the time to watch the entire video for yourself (like I said it runs about 45 minutes); see my notes below the video which gives you plenty of highlights.

In the video Matt States:

  • WordPress takes care of 80-90% of the mechanics of SEO. [@3:30]
    • Mechanics = “how crawlable a website is.”
  • Plugins Matt uses: [@4:15]
  • “We crawl roughly in order of PageRank.  The more PR you have the faster you’re likely to be found, the deeper we’ll crawl, the more often we’ll visit.” [@5:40]
    • PageRank = the number of people that link to you and how important those links are.  (basic SEO).
    • Example:  A web page has a PR of 9 and has three outlinks (links heading out and away from the website) then each of those outlinks gets 3.
    • PageRank starts to “evaporate” each time it goes across a link.
    • Getting backlinks:  You want people to know you and you want them to be reputable.
  • Blog posts need to be on-topic and you want to be reputable. [@9:40]
    • How to do this:
      • If you don’t love it, don’t write about it.
        • Write often, write every day.
      • What am I good at doing?
      • What do I have to say?
  • Keywords [@12:05]
    • Think about all the different ways someone can describe something. Put those into your blog post naturally.
    • Jargon mis-match:  Translate [jargon] into regular language.
      • what are titles you could type that are “normal”.
    • Use Google Keyword Tool.
    • If you don’t have [a specific word] on your site you probably aren’t going to rank.
  • Custom Structure on URLs “/%postname%/ [@19:15]
  • Google looks at over 200 things [when determining where to rank you]
    • Things in the title
    • Things in the URL
    • Things that are highlighted like H1 tags and stuff like that.
    • Be sure you put the keywords in the title in some way.
    • Power Tip:  Use variations between the post title itself and within the URL itself [the permalink].  Not spam.  One or two variants.  Use them as separate opportunities to put keywords in.  Now you can rank for both variations of the keywords.
  • Use categories that are also good keywords.
  • Keywords in URL paths:  example.com/my-keywords
    • Dashes are best
    • Next best is underscores
    • No spaces is worst.
  • If you’ve already done your site should you change things?
    • No.
  • Don’t overdo [on page SEO]
    • After you mention a term two or three times Google knows what your post is about.
  • Gaining a reputation [@25:24]
    • Be interesting. Funny, alternative opinions.
    • Update often.
    • Apply Katamari Philosophy.
      • Start small.  Start in a niche that you can do well.
      • Build up, build up, build up.  Get there gradually.
    • Ways to Get Links [@30:14 in the video]
      • Provide a useful service.
      • Do original research or reporting. Huge!
      • Give great information.
      • Find a creative niche.  One good idea can carry you so, so far.
      • Write some code.  Open source.
      • Live blogging!  Blogging as it happens.
      • Make lists.  People love lists.
      • Create controversy.  Too often sometimes can’t work well.
      • Meet folks on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed
  • Should you do a podcast?
    • Recommends videos over podcasts.
    • Videos tend to rank relatively well on Google.
  • Tools you should know about [@35:55]
    • Webmaster console at http://Google.com/webmasters/
    • Google Analytics
    • FeedBurner:  MyBrand for free feeds.mattcutts.com instead of feeds.feedburner.com.
    • Google website optimizer
    • Custom Search Engine: free site search
    • AdSense
      • Use these tags to mark out the meat of your blog post so that AdSense will only target what’s contained in the tags: (highly recommended)
        • <!–google_ad_section_start–>
        • <!– google_ad_section_end –>
  • Google Analytics Tip [@38:12]
    • Click Settings -> top landing pages and will tell you which blog posts get the most visitors.
    • Bounces tell you how often people come to your page and then leave.
    • Simple trick:  Show related posts.
  • What NOT to do [@40:19]
    • Avoid paid posts.
  • Keep your WordPress updated!
  • Power Tip: [@43:57]
    • Add an .htaccess to your /wp-admin
      • This says only these two IP addresses are allowed to use the wp-admin.
      • Search for “protect wp-admin”.  Also on Matt’s blog.
  • In WP core 2.8 you don’t have to worry about the rel=canonical tags.  Already included. [@44:50]

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