WordCamp: SEO speech

Yesterday Matt Mullenweg asked Cameron and me to give a speech on SEO during WordCamp. Our session was on WordPress and how people can optimize their blog to maximize their search engine traffic. Our speech was 10 minutes long and then for about 50 minutes we answered questions. Here are some of the things that we discussed:

  1. Add a unique meta description tag to all of your pages. Keep it short and do put tons of keywords in it. You can use the head meta description plugin to add a unique description tag automatically to each page.
  2. Modify your title tags to say the title of the post entry first and then your blog name. (or remove your blog name from the title tag all together)
  3. WordPress has titles (tooltip) on most of their links. They start off with "Permanent link to", we recommend removing the "Permanent link to" part.
  4. Try to add good content on a regular basis to keep your blog fresh. The more the better, but quality content is generally better then quantity.
  5. Create a sitemap for your blog, you can use the Google webmaster tools.
  6. Join in on the conversation. Link and trackback to others.
  7. Leverage the existing mediums out there such as digg and del.icio.us to bring in traffic and build links.

Overall the speech went pretty well, or at least I hope it did. A lot of people came up to us after and said they learned some new information. We also met up with Bill from SEO by the SEA since he also made it Wordcamp. If you have any questions about optimizing your blog, feel free to post a comment and Cameron or I will answer them.

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SES

Trackbacks (1)

PlanetMike Blog, August 12, 2006

“Wordpress Titles” — In WordCamp: SEO speech it is suggested to “Modify your title tags to say the title of the post entry first and then your blog name. (or remove your blog name from the title tag all together).” So I removed the blog name from the title on t...

Reader Comments (3)

Derek, August 6, 2006

Man I wish I could have made it to WordCamp. Out of curiosity, what is the advantage of removing "Permalink" from the link titles?

Lauren, August 6, 2006

Good talk at WordCamp. I learned a lot about SEO: for starters, what SEO was. Thanks!

Neil Patel, August 7, 2006

Derek, the titles (tooltip) should represent what your post titles are on and in most cases they are not on "Permalink".