Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, provided an insight to optimizing your WordPress site for maximum SEO effectiveness at the WordCamp 2009 Conference in San Francisco. SEO has gained a repution for being mysterious since the search engines don’t publicize exactly how their algorithms work, but his pointers confirm our opinion that quality of content is the critical element rather than focusing on keyword-stuffing and metatags.
That being said, here were his major observations:
- Don’t change old URLs if they don’t comply.
- Don’t over-do the mechanics of SEO: write about what you know and love, and ranking will follow.
- Build a reputation through original research, live blogging, finding a creative niche, making lists, creating code, being conversial (sometimes) and meeting people through social media.
- Reduce bounce rate by using ‘Show Related Posts’ feature.
- Security: keep WordPress updated and use .htaccess to limit IP access to your administration.
- Use Google Webmaster Tools and Analytics to check most popular referrers and manage 404 errors.
- 90% of WordPress installation are only in existence to created to create spam.
- The number one request from site owners is to improve their ranking in Google.
- GoogleBot considers over 200 factors in ranking pages. Pages, not sites, are ranked so the focus should be to improve the quality of every page on your site..
- “WordPress takes care of 80-90% of SEO” in the pure mechanics.
- Google rewards sites that are relevant and reputable, and inbound links from other pages with a high PageRank helps reputability. A description of the PageRank algorithm followed (see the presentation for details).
- Avoid the obsession with backlinks since low value inbound links don’t help your ranking. High quality and relevant links do.
- Translate your site into real English not technical speak or jargon – this helps both humans and search engines.
- Use the Google Keyword tool to find synonyms and commonly-used search terms around your topic.
- Don’t engage in keyword-stuffing techniques, since your pages will be penalized.
- In permalinks, use the custom structure ‘%post name%’ for maximum SEO usage of the URL (and put keywords in URL). Don’t update the old URLs if they don’t comply since this will result in broken links.
- Don’t over-do the mechanics of SEO: write about your area of expertise, and ranking will follow.
- Build a reputation through original research, live blogging, finding a creative niche, making lists, creating code, and meeting people through social media.
- Reduce bounce rate by using the ‘Show Related Posts’ feature.
- Security: keep WordPress updated and use .htaccess to limit IP access to your administration.
- Use Google Webmaster Tools and Analytics to check most popular referrers and manage 404 errors.
While these tips were geared towards bloggers, they’re relevant for every business website that wants to attract more traffic. The WordPress platform has simplified the mechanics of SEO, and now the challenge is to create high quality and relevant content that will increase your reputation – and consequently improve your PageRank.
