SEO Help for WordPress
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From the start, I’d like to commend Automattic for being open to the dissection of the SEO strategies used on the WordPress.com home page. It’s quite brave of them to feature this critique during a public session of WordCamp San Diego. Yet keep in mind, I am certain forward-thinking Matt Mullenweg and his WordPress team consider this tutorial to be one that each of us will benefit from.
Next, I’d like to speak to the authority of the presenter, Stephan Spenser. It’s not too often that I like to use the term “expert” when describing someone, especially in the realm of SEO, but given the fact the Stephan has co-authored a highly regarded book on the topic he’s a rare exception to that rule. The Art of SEO is published by O’Reillly and includes insights from Stephan along with collaborators Eric Enge, Jessie Stricchiola and Rand Fishkin.
Stephan’s first challenge for the WordPress.com webmasters is aimed at the poorly optimized navigation of the site. Although text links appear at the bottom he quickly points out how the abundance footer links get “somewhat discounted”. Then in what I find a surprising move he compares the site to the Yahoo! home page pointing to Yahoo’s strong navigation links which lead to high positioning on Google search results.
Stephan demonstrates the use of Google Adwords Keywords Tool which is also favored in the Lynda.com tutorial on “Performing Keyword Research”. He show how optimal results from the Google Adwords Keyword Tool can be achieved by changing the match type to “exact” which is another crucial tactic stressed by both Stephan and Jill Whalen in the Lynda.com SEO training series. In the case of WordPress.com, Stephan suggests that the sought after keyword should be “blog” rather than “free blog”.
SEO Best Practice
Stephan continues to address the gaping holes in the SEO strategy of the WordPress.com site, and at the same time he instructs us all, through the use of specific examples which can be easily translated into our own individual SEO best practices. Stephan does a tremendous job of cramming a vast amount of information into this 7 minute lighting session including:
- Tag and Category links
- CTR – Click Through Rate
- Inbound links
- Yahoo! Site Explorer
- Link Authority
- Anchor text
- Canonical URL’s
- Duplicate Content
Slides for the presentation are available on SlideShare.
I’m impressed with this episode of WordPress.tv and the SEO strategies that Stephan suggests. What do you think? How can you apply these tactics to your own site?
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