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WordPress Search Engine Optimization- Second Edition
WordPress Search Engine Optimization- Second Edition

WordPress Search Engine Optimization- Second Edition: A complete guide to dominating search engines with your WordPress site

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Profile Icon Michael David
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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4 (3 Ratings)
Paperback Oct 2015 318 pages 1st Edition
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Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Michael David
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$19.99 per month
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4 (3 Ratings)
Paperback Oct 2015 318 pages 1st Edition
eBook
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Paperback
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Renews at $19.99p/m
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WordPress Search Engine Optimization- Second Edition

Chapter 2. Optimizing WordPress for SEO

In this chapter, we'll align your SEO strategy with the WordPress platform and help you solidify your plan. You'll need to set realistic goals and timelines for your business or website through educated investigation and analysis. Proper and thorough planning is needed to ensure that you succeed in the competitive search markets.

We will begin by setting up the goals for your Internet presence and determining how to best leverage WordPress' flexibility and power for maximum benefit. We'll examine how to best determine and reach out to the specific audience for your goods or services. Different Internet models require different strategies. For example, if your goal is instant e-commerce sales, you strategize differently than if your goal is a broad-based branding campaign. We'll also examine how to determine how competitive the existing search market is, and how to develop a plan to penetrate that market.

It's...

Setting goals for your business and website and getting inspiration

A dizzying variety of websites run on the WordPress platform, everything from The Wall Street Journal's blog to the photo sharing comedy site PeopleofWalMart.com (http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/). Not every reader will have purely commercial intent in creating his or her web presence. However, nearly all webmasters want more traffic and more visibility for their sites. With that in mind, to increase the reach, visibility, and ranking of your website, you'll want to develop your website plan based on the type of audience you are trying to reach, the type of business you run, and what your business goals are.

Analyzing your audience

You will obviously want to analyze the nature of your audience. Your website's content, its design, its features, and even the pixel width of the viewable area will depend on your audience. Is your audience in the 65+ age group? If so, your design will need to incorporate large fonts...

Knowing what WordPress already does for your SEO

Now, we will turn to what WordPress accomplishes naturally for your SEO efforts. Luckily, WordPress handles much—but not all of the nuts and bolts of search engine optimization naturally. WordPress has an innate economical architecture that generates lean and fast-loading code that search engines love. It enjoys respect and familiarity among search engines, which aids in search spidering. It is a speedy platform that lets you build bigger and better sites in less time. RSS feeds are built in, so you can reach more readers quite easily. WordPress automatically builds keyword-rich URL strings for further SEO benefit. And WordPress effortlessly builds reliable text-based navigation. We'll handle each of these elements in turn and learn how to harness these strengths for maximum benefit.

Understanding WordPress' economical architecture

WordPress employs sound economical architecture to display pages reliably and quickly. In the...

Creating reliable and text-based navigation

WordPress automatically generates simple, text-based navigation that works well for both users and search spiders. Site visitors employ your website's navigation to browse your site and find content. Search engines use your navigation in a similar way, with a twist. Search engines follow the links in your navigation to find and index your pages. In addition, search engines use the text in your navigational links to reliably determine the topic of the destination page. In other words, the text you use in your navigation is a search engine ranking factor.

Tip

Avoiding image links in navigation

It is possible to create a navigation menu that employs images instead of text. However, when a search engine spider encounters an image link with no anchor text, the search engine has no text to define that element for the destination page. So, for search optimization, it's clearly better to use text links rather than image links in navigation.

Luckily...

Engaging visitors with built-in collaboration, contribution, and community building

WordPress is ready-made for collaboration, contribution, and community building—the 3 Cs that can transform a stale, static website into a vibrant web-based community. Two key collaborative features, User Roles and the Commenting System, keep both new and returning visitors engaged with your website.

When thinking about search optimization, it is tempting to focus only on the competitive grind of search ranking positions, and not focus on user retention and user loyalty. A strong position in search results will certainly bring new customers, but always think of ways to keep your visitors engaged to your website, and hence to your products and services. A first-time user of your website is a visitor, but on their second visit they become a potential customer.

WordPress incorporates several collaborative and community features that can help you engage your visitors, interact with your customers, and even...

Understanding what WordPress doesn't do for your SEO

Now, we will turn to some ways in which WordPress does not automatically further your SEO efforts, and some ways in which it can potentially undermine your efforts. Note the term automatically—because WordPress can be made to do anything with a little bit of effort.

The best way to think of where WordPress fits within the universe of the major open source platforms like Joomla! or Drupal is the following: WordPress is easier to use and more automated than Joomla! or Drupal, but with that simplicity and automation comes restrictions in the ease with which it can be customized. Both WordPress' strengths and its weaknesses as a search platform flow from its simplicity. WordPress doesn't easily offer a lot of page-by-page customization, either in the body of the document or in the navigation menus, WordPress generally wants to generate one style of page and one menu structure for an entire site. Also, in its default setup...

Setting goals for your business and website and getting inspiration


A dizzying variety of websites run on the WordPress platform, everything from The Wall Street Journal's blog to the photo sharing comedy site PeopleofWalMart.com (http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/). Not every reader will have purely commercial intent in creating his or her web presence. However, nearly all webmasters want more traffic and more visibility for their sites. With that in mind, to increase the reach, visibility, and ranking of your website, you'll want to develop your website plan based on the type of audience you are trying to reach, the type of business you run, and what your business goals are.

Analyzing your audience

You will obviously want to analyze the nature of your audience. Your website's content, its design, its features, and even the pixel width of the viewable area will depend on your audience. Is your audience in the 65+ age group? If so, your design will need to incorporate large fonts and you will...

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Key benefits

  • Everything you need to get your WordPress site to the top of search engines and bring thousands of new customers to your blog or business
  • Learn everything from keyword research and link building to customer conversions, in this complete guide
  • Packed with real-word examples to help get your site noticed on Google, Yahoo, and Bing

Description

WordPress is a powerful platform for creating feature-rich and attractive websites but, with a little extra tweaking and effort, your WordPress site can dominate search engines and bring thousands of new customers to your business. WordPress Search Engine Optimization will show you the secrets that professional SEO companies use to take websites to the top of search results. You'll take your WordPress site to the next level; you'll brush aside even the stiffest competition with the advanced tutorials in this book.

Who is this book for?

This book is for anyone who runs any of the over 90,000,000 WordPress installations throughout the world. If you can login to your WordPress website, you can implement most of the tips in this book without any coding experience.

What you will learn

  • The elements that search engines use to rank websites—and how to optimize your site for premium placement
  • Harness social media sites to extend the reach of your site and gain more visitors
  • Discover the high-volume, high-value search phrases that customers use when searching for your products or services
  • Avoid dangerous black-hat optimization techniques and the people who advocate and purvey them
  • Build high-quality, high-value links from other websites to raise your rankings in search engines
  • Create optimized and engaging content that both search engines and readers will love
  • Avoid common SEO mistakes that can get your site penalized by search engines

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Oct 28, 2015
Length: 318 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785887642
Vendor :
WordPress Foundation
Concepts :
Tools :

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Product Details

Publication date : Oct 28, 2015
Length: 318 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785887642
Vendor :
WordPress Foundation
Concepts :
Tools :

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Table of Contents

13 Chapters
1. Getting Started – SEO Basics Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Optimizing WordPress for SEO Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Researching and Working with Keywords Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Understanding Technical Optimization Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Creating Optimized and Engaging Content Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Link Building Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Using Social Media Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Avoiding Black Hat Techniques Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Avoiding SEO Mistakes Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Testing Your Site and Monitoring Your Progress Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
A. WordPress SEO Plugins Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
B. Other SEO Resources Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
(3 Ratings)
5 star 33.3%
4 star 33.3%
3 star 33.3%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
MatBay Apr 11, 2019
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I read the first edition years ago, and it was the doorway into my current career in SEO. Whenever I'm training a new SEO on how to optimize WordPress, I hand them a copy of this book. Chapter Four in particular is as cogent a summary of fundamental keyword and onpage optimization theory as you will see.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
M Bijman Dec 31, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
Michael David explains in a very detailed, thorough and balanced way in his manual Wordpress Search Engine Optimization (2nd ed.) how SEO for WordPress sites works. David explains that; "It's important to keep in mind the role of the search engine. Too often, webmasters think or say Google is against them because Google appears to rank lower-value sites in favor of their own. The truth is the exact opposite: Google wants you to rank – as long as your result serves the need of its user base. You need to give Google what it’s looking for (or Yahoo or Bing, as the case may be), and Google will rank your site higher." (p.3) I was somewhat unnerved by David's to-the-point disambiguation and clarifications of the world of Google and SEO. But don't shoot the messenger: He is merely stating outright what many people don't know and will never find out, unless they read this. He gives the reader the advantage of his insider knowledge. Never again will you be fooled by spam, or hoax emails or all the other nonsense that pitches up on your site or in your in-box. I realized how much more there is for me to do, how things hang together, and which mistakes I must avoid. It was a real eye-opener. Particularly useful chapters are:Chapter 1: SEO BasicsChapter 5: Creating Optimized and Engaging ContentsChapter 6: Avoiding SEO MistakesChapter 7: Testing Your Site and Monitoring Your ProgressI would recommend you buy the ebook or pdf version of this manual because of all the hyperlinks in it (specifically in the Appendices that list the plugins and resources). Apart from being comprehensive and balanced, David also has a good writing style that makes the argumentation flow and draws the reader into the explanations, which are often complex. If you have a WordPress site, I would say this is one of the best manuals and technical handbooks to refer to and keep on hand.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Fede Gómez Sep 22, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
Si ya se tienen conocimientos generales sobre SEO el libro aporta más bien poco. Indicado para personas que se inicien en la optimización para buscadores con pautas específicas para WordPress.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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