SEO, All Day, Errrrrrrrrrrrrryday

Alex

July 17th, 2015

Editor’s Note: Just like how SEO is a slow burn and long-tail, so is ice fishing.

Team RB, it’s been a busy week. Here’s my post for this week.

Digital Marketer (EP) – How to SEO a WordPress Site

SEO should be part of a larger digital marketing strategy.

Here’s 3 reasons why…

SEO is a slow burn – You won’t see results from SEO overnight. In fact, the changes you make today could take months to pay dividends. SEO is a long term strategy… but an important one.
SEO isn’t reliable – Google is always tweaking its algorithm and your search traffic will go up and down as competition ebbs and flows in your niche. Don’t put all your eggs in the SEO basket… or any basket for that matter.
Consider humans first – Don’t go SEO crazy and start creating content only a search spider could stomach. Always err on the side of user experience.

SEO Checklist

Set up Google Webmaster Tools (Google Support)

To use Google Webmaster Tools you will need to “verify” that you own the website. The easiest way to do this is using the Wordpress SEO Plug-In by Yoast.

After adding your domain to Google Webmaster Tools here, Google will ask you to “Verify Ownership” and will provide a number of methods.

Simply select ALTERNATIVE METHODS and then HTML TAG. Copy the meta tag (pictured in yellow highlighter below).

Then, Paste the meta tag into the GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS field under SEO > DASHBOARD in the WordPress SEO plug-in and click SAVE CHANGES.

Now go back to Google Webmaster Tools and click VERIFY.

Check Google Webmaster Tools

Make sure there are no messages.
Navigate to the crawl section and then security issues. (If you have malware Google will stop sending you traffic. Sucuri.net – Cleans up hacked websites).
Navigate to crawl errors. Check Google Webmaster tools once a month.
Check the redirect errors and fix them using 301 redirects.

Check Google Analytics

Google Analytics – Acquisition –> Channels –> Organic Search

Look to see if it is growing!

Pro Tip: Use Annotations!

Check Google Index

To use the site operator in Google, copy and paste the following (replacing domain.com with your own domain) into Google and click SEARCH:

site:domain.com
How many results?

Check Your BackLinks

Find shitty ones, open webmaster tools

Resources:
1. OpenSiteExplorer – Free backlink checker
2. Disavow Link Tool – Request that Google discount bad links pointing at your website. Be careful with this tool!

How to Recover from Negative SEO – A QuickSprout article detailing negative SEO and what can be done about it.

Check Your Robots.txt File

RobotsTXT.org – A good resource for all thing robots.txt

Check Your SEO Plugin

WordPress SEO by Yoast – The best SEO plug-in available for WordPress.

Uncheck (no index, follow)

Author
Date

Generate XML Sitemap

Webmaster Tools
- Crawl
  - Sitemap
    - Add/Test Sitemap

Check Two WordPress Settings

Settings
- WordPress URL
Reading
- Uncheck Search Engine Visibility

Check Your Permalinks

Post Name Structure

Check Your Social Sharing Plug-in

Add one because more shares is good for SEO

Check Your Page Load Speed

WebPageTest.org – Good for checking page load speed.
Google Page Speed Insights – Gives actionable advice on speeding up your website load speeds.
W3 Total Cache – A good caching plug-in for WordPress that can speed up page load speeds.
Why Site Speed Optimization Should Be Part of Your SEO Strategy – A good article from Moz on the importance of site speed in regards to SEO.

Here’s a Link to the Asana Template! (Does this work when you click on it without logging in? How can we make some Asana projects public?)

The 5 On-Page SEO Factors are:

Slug
Body
Alt
Title Tag
Meta Description

Read – The Follow Post on Blog Growth

The 5 Stages of Blog Growth: How Your Traffic Tactics Should Change as You Grow

Stage 1: Your blog is born

Define your niche
Create a reader persona
Create your blog
Discover where your readers hang out

Stage 2: Finding your 100 true fans

Guest-posting
Create the right type of content for your blog
Paid traffic
Develop social media presence

Stage 3: Attracting swarms of fans—scaling up

Continue with your traffic-building strategies
Create a content schedule
Start considering monetization

Stage 4: Reap the rewards—getting paid

Focus on monetization
Hire

Stage 5: Maintain your position on the Golden Throne

Keep hiring
Automate
Be selective
SEO

I loved reading this blog post. It was nice that the flow he discussed is essentially what we did for Sales Hacker. We were at the end of stage three when we handed it off.