On Wednesday evening, I get the honor of presenting on the topic of Search Engine Optimization with WordPress – to The WordPress Winnipeg Meetup Group at SkullSpace (Floor 3, 125 Adelaide Street, Winnipeg, MB)!
WordPress, As Part Of Your Balanced SEO Plan.
Wordpress Winnipeg Meetup Group
In some ways I feel that promoting SEO to this crowd is like I’m selling ice to Eskimos.
It’s not that I’m preaching to the converted, but rather, I use the analogy of how Climate Change is occurring faster than many Eskimos are adapting!
And it’s kind of the same with SEO Change on the Internet – fundamental shifts are occurring faster than many business owners are adapting!
Good news is, WordPress can and does adapt – no matter how SEO might change!
Organized by Ian Stewart and Matt Weibe, and including such Winnipeg WordPress Masters as Krista Stevens, David Pensato, Brent Toderash, Dan Bernardic and my sister, Jill Lampi.
I’m glad Sharon Evans will be in attendance, and I hope I can provide some helpful information to SEO Skeptics like Carl Seier. I’m keen to connect up with Anthony Ramos, Gordon Johnson, Anna Matthes, Syndi Cannon, Duane McLennan and Donald McKenzie.
And, it’s rumored that the Marketing Director for The World Famous Palomino Club, Tina Lussier will be attending, making more nervous than ever!
Three Take-Aways From This Talk
- A Way To Measure Your Success And Progress
- A Way To Improve Your On-The-Page Ranking Factors
- The Unrealized Importance Of Social Media To SEO in 2012
My talk will be interactive, and I’ll be looking forward to participation from the crowd as I cover these three key areas.
A Way To Measure Your Success And Progress
Douglas Lampi, January 2012
First, I’ll introduce Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. I feel these are core basics to helping measure and improve the success of any website online. It’s important to register your site and verify ownership within Webmaster Tools so you gain access to much more information that Google already has about your site. And it’s important to cross-link your Google Analytics with your Google Webmaster Tools to enable real time visitor stats and additional features for monitoring the activity on your site.
When using a WordPress site, I recommend you add the Google Sitemap Generator Plugin to your site, and then register this sitemap within Google Webmaster Tools.
Once these setup stages are complete, it’s a good idea to review this data at least monthly, and strive to adjust and improve your site content and layout etc., to get more of the actions you want from your visitors.
A Way To Improve Your On-The-Page Ranking Factors
A two phase process – first, selecting your keywords and second, tuning your page for that keyword phrase.
I recommend using the WordPress search engine optimization plugin called SEOPressor when creating blog posts and pages. This plugin gives you a numerical score – a percentage score – of exactly how well-tuned your page is for your target keyword phrase. It’s like having an SEO professional looking over your shoulder and telling you what to adjust in your page elements so that you have the best chance of ranking well.
Another essential WordPress SEO tool, for so many reasons, was recommended at our last meeting by Brent Toderash – WordPress SEO by Yoast
The Unrealized Importance Of Social Media To SEO in 2012
All the traditional White Hat Search Engine Optimization strategies still work today, and will continue to be important – but it’s vital to realize that top search rankings established by the best SEO – is trumped by the power of a Social Media connection.
Here’s a real-time example, and a personal experience of mine, as I first began to find Google Plus Connections and Twitter Shares turning up in place of top search rankings when I was doing searches in Google – a 3 minute video on YouTube: Google Goes Social – Twitter Shares Turn Up In SERPS
WordPress Helps You Adapt
How does WordPress help you adapt to the fact that Social Media Likes, Tweets and Shares are becoming an important component to top rankings in all the major search engines? Namely through the flexibility of plugins that give your site visitors an easy way to share each page and blog post individually, while also displaying the number of people who have liked, tweeted or shared the content.
Add Twitter, Facebook Like, Google plus one Social share
As the Internet Changes – it’s easy to simply switch plugins!
So Much To Say – So Little Time!
I’d be delighted if you shared your tips and plugins for Search Engine Optimization! If it was an item shared during our meetup, or an item that one of our Virtual Attendies would like to share, please leave your comments below!!
Post-Talk Follow-up – What Are People Saying
Other Speakers – Matt Weibe on Typography and Fonts
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice work @Douglaslampi.
Looking forward to having you share some of your cool Word Press SEO “best practices with my viewers of Tourism Marketing TV @ http://www.travelbusinesssuccess.com soon.
I think everyone in the room there knew the basics I covered – they are a bunch of wordpress pro’s – but the presentation was a great excuse for me to create a blog post and then follow up with the social media connections.
Three WAVES Of Traffic From Real World Events
Although this was a very small experiment, there were three ‘Waves’ of traffic generated from my online blogging about my real world event.
The first wave of traffic came at the time of my talk when a few people took pictures on their phones and ipads, and tweeted out about the event as it was happening. I would have been wise to specifically ASK people to do me that favor as the talk went along… and I would certainly gained more participation and made for a larger first wave of traffic.
The second wave of traffic is occurring now, immediately after the event as people are posting pictures, sharing comments, tweeting and liking the blog post, new followers on twitter, new connections on Google + etc…
The third wave of traffic will be the ongoing inbound traffic from people who may find my SEO information through searches, and through search results that are now enhanced by any of the social actions on that post over time.
Turn Your Event Into A Lasting Asset
This way, my volunteer time to give a small talk and the advertising costs of creating the blog post and social media followup, are actually creating a lasting asset for my business.
The event, the blog post and the social media conversations during and after the event, become a powerful credibility statement – a fantastic way to position yourself as an expert, no matter what business area or industry you are involved in.