Wordpress User SEO - "How To" - Advanced Operational Rankings Strategies & Tips

The internet is awash with "SEO for Wordpress" posts on how to technically optimize Wordpress itself to be search engine friendly, but if that's all you know, you may not get so far..

For while it is true that for many sites, the design and structure of the site are a factor in holding it back, and optimized Wordpress does sort that out in principle..

As you surely know by now, SEO is also what you write on the site, you cannot rank without having some form of relevant content on the site**, and just like a championship winning F1 car is not the same without the driver, so adding content to an SEO'd Wordpress installation is not usually going to be enough without someone to steer it.

This hub is a shortened version of our Wordpress User SEO Training module

** There are exceptions to this, but in general the principle is true.

So lets assume that you have already technically optimized the site, if you haven't, go to Joost's site here, read understand and implement, then come back here for the low-down on how to use it. Ok? Good, now leave that alone and lets get to the important bit.

Content is King Right?

No, actually **just** amazing content is not king. It's quite likely that if you just publish and forget it, that nobody will ever even see it.

Planning and designing your content in advance is a fundamental cornerstone of good User SEO.

If the keywords you want to target are even halfway competitive, then there is absolutely no point just splurging it all out on one killer blog post and expecting it to rank, because it likely won't.

Wordpress has several key SEO advantages over static sites, and it's in the ongoing usage that these attributes can be leveraged to get a better (than otherwise) performance from the site in the SERPs.

Wordpress has a very powerful internal "ball linking" structure that auto links your new content together in a way that static sites just cannot compete with via tags and categories, and then trackbacks and related post links, and Wordpress also "launches" new content more powerfully into the search due to being profiled as blogs by Google and included into the faster blogsearch index.

There is also a very noticeable fresh content boost for new posts, which usually tends to fade over a few weeks, so we want to harness that and ride the crest of the wave all the way to the beach.. (or 1st page of Google)

Understanding your target searches is critical, you need to have a sense of where you are, and where you need to be, so whatever keywords you are considering approaching, do the searches, and look at the results.

Then dig a bit deeper with Google's advanced search Operators

The numbers from the allintitle: search in particular will give you a good idea of what you're up against, and hence how long it's likely to take, and how much content and effort will be required.

Ok so lets assume that you now know the keywords you want to target, you know the allintitle: searches show less than 5k (very easy) so lets do an example.

SEO Services Scotland - this would be pointless and not worth targeting for actual business leads as explained here "SEO services whatever", but lets use it as an example anyway. So the procedure would be..

1. First exploratory" Post on the subject, medium length, 450-600 words.
2. Second "back-up" post - links to first post using target anchor text, 300 words+
3. Put up static Wordpress page - containing content from first post, but expanded upon
4. 301 redirect post 1 to page, important - do not delete the post, leave it there but redirecting.
5. Third post links to second post and new page
6. Fourth post links to second, third and new page etc..

Every post on the theme should be in the same parental category, in this case either SEO services or SEO Scotland would be good, and then all of these posts should be tagged with the same set of relevant tags.

This should take place over a few weeks, you need to give each piece of content enough time to get indexed, and to pick up the backlinks from the RSS you have your blog submitted to everywhere. (You do have it submitted everywhere, don't you?)

1. First post - reconnaisance. This should be a condensed version of what your ultimate landing page will contain, summarise the subject without going into too much detail.

• Use this methodology to introduce the subject in the first paragraph.
• Use <h> subtitles and add id="myID" into the code, so it looks like this: <h3 id="seoservicesglasgow">SEO services Glasgow</h3>
• Ensure to use the strongest version of the URL possible for the ultimate target phrase, in this instance it will be:
• www.domain.com/10/12/seo-services-scotland/
• The title tag should also start with:
• <title>SEO Services Scotland - More Relevant Keywords (beer etc :) </title>
• Link to 2 of your previous best posts (trackbacks should be on, and dofollow)

Then publish it, and wait a few days. In the meantime point a few links at it, forums, social bookmarks, blog posts, whatever your preference.

2. Second post - reinforcements. This should be further information on the subject, digging in deeper to one specific aspect of the previous post based around one of the id="myID" subheadings.

• Vary the Title, use keyword variations and spread the keywords out, so it isn't as targeted as the 1st post
• <title> Why Your Business in Scotland Needs An SEO Company</title>Vary the URL, spread the keywords out, so it isn't as targeted as the 1st post
• www.domain.com/10/12/why-scottish-business-need-seo/
• Link Once to the first post using anchor text "SEO services Scotland"
• Link to 2 other of your strongest posts.

Publish it, wait a few days, point a few links at it, forums, social bookmarks, blogposts etc.

3. Third Post (Page) now we're going to move it from the blog system to a static page. Copy all the content from post 1 to a static page, and enhance and embellish it, more text, maybe videos of something adding more value to the page.

• Use same URL as the first post, but as a page it will look like:
• www.domain.com/seo-services-scotland/
• Use the same page titles tags exactly
• 301 redirect the 1st post to the new page (using Redirection or similar)
• Leave 1st post live and public, just 301ing to new page when you try to access it.
• Remove all links from this landing page content, either internal or external.
• Now include the page into the site's main navigation

Publish it, wait a few days, point a few links at it, forums, social bookmarks, blogposts etc.

4. Fourth Post - procedure same as second. Further information around the subject, digging in deeper to one specific aspect of the previous post based around one of the id="myID" subheadings.

• Vary Title, keyword variations, spread keywords out, so it isn't as targeted
• <title>SEO Services Company in Scotland - Will Work for Food</title>Vary URL keywords out, so not as tightly targeted 1st post / new landing page
• www.domain.com/10/12/why-seo-services-company-scotland-needs-business/
• Link to the new landing page using anchor "SEO services Scotland"
• In the link, add the relevant sub-heading ID - /seo-services-scotland/#myID
• Link to 2 other of these theme posts with each new post.

5. Rinse & Repeat until landing page is ranking where it needs to be.

This will be entirely dependent on your search, and your site's current level of inbound links, but this process builds link strength from within as well from inbound links as you move forwards.

Obviously in the example above our site's domain authority is fairly strong so just a little content and sitewide internal links navigation links was nearly enough alone. Add in a couple of blog posts, and a couple of links and there it is.

But lets look a little more closely at what's actually happening now.

1. 1st Post - indexed - fresh content boost - inbound link-juice - RSS etc
2. 2nd Post - links to 1st post - fresh content boost - more inbound linkjuice
3. 3rd Page - indexed - starts picking up sitewide nav links - Google follows 301, 1st post removed from index - replaced with enhanced page, rankings transfer over and usually always jump (improve)
4. Relevant links on your site still point to post but redirect to new landing page, there are now 2 lots of links pointing in at the page, with different anchors.
5. 4th Post - fresh content boost - links RSS etc, linking into landing page
6. 5th Post - repeat as required.

The idea is to build an internal "Relevance Cluster" as described here with your main landing page as a static "champion" page, with multiple smaller but highly relevant articles around the subject, all linking at the main landing page.

Each of these posts is like a little Pagerank / anchor text / fresh content boost / RSS scoop, out there picking up it's own links, and re-funneling it's Google love directly at your main page.

If you have the time and patience you could further develop this principle with a "White hat Link wheel" or even build yourself a proper linkwheel that works.

There are a couple of other SEO principles at play here that are best explained fully in upcoming hubs, but suffice to say that when done correctly these techniques work very well and over time allow you to compete with more much powerful sites in their searches. 

Hopefully this will be useful to the Wordpress SEO warriors amongst you.