If you enter content in a WordPress site and no one can find it, does it make an impact? Find out how to increase the visibility of the content in your WordPress site.

1. If content is entered into a WordPress site
and no one finds it, does it make an
impact?
Optimizing content visibility
Teresa Lane
Image Credit: armedwithvisions.com
@teresaalane

2. What’s Content Visibility?
1. Getting found
– relevance, search engine rank, social media,
blogosphere, word of mouth
2. Getting clicked when you are found
– relevance, search engine display (page title, meta
description, structured data, Google+)
3. Getting conversions when you’re clicked
– relevance, usability, navigability, valuable content

3. We’re #1!
• Good places to be first:
– On the Scene
– In Search Engine Rankings
– In the Hearts of Users
Image Credits: birthdayexpress.com, the1709blog.blogspot.com

4. Thinking First: Headlines
• EyeTrack III study showed
“big, bold” headlines are:
– viewed first
– most viewed, even above
images
• Clear, concise, focused
• Start with the punchline
http://blog.crazyegg.com/2012/08/22/website-design-mistakes/
http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/08/01/7-conversion-optimization-lessons-learned-from-eye-tracking/
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/writing-style-for-print-vs-web/

5. Thinking First: Body Content
• Information at the top of the page gets the most
attention from users.
• Average user spends 69% of time looking at
page’s left side.
• Important content: top of page, first in
paragraph, first in sentence
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/website-reading/
http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/08/01/7-conversion-optimization-lessons-learned-from-eye-tracking/
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/writing-style-for-print-vs-web/
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-little-do-users-read/

6. Visibility in Body Content
• Scannable
– Subheadings
– Short paragraphs:
3 sentences, 1 topic
• Give users next steps
– No dead ends
– Conversion or relevant content
http://myblogguest.com/blog/the-art-the-necessity-of-using-subheadings-myblogguest/
http://rafaltomal.com/5-easy-tips-to-improve-every-blog-design/
http://www.copyblogger.com/formatting-wordpress-posts/

7. Thinking First: Site Hierarchy
• Site hierarchy/structure often expressed
primarily through navigation
• Reflect idea organization in site hierarchy
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/working-with-navigation-in-seo
http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/site-navigation-for-seo/
http://searchengineland.com/how-to-use-effective-navigation-labels-for-search-engine-optimization-76300
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-filing-cabinet-theory-of-site-architecture

8. Site Structure
Home
Internal Link
Main Categories (likely the top-level navigation)
Content can link throughout the structure but lives in
only one place to avoid duplicate content
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/internal-link
http://searchengineland.com/information-architecture-is-crucial-to-good-seo-14736

9. Site Structure: URLs
• Keyword-focused page names are friendly for
users and search engines
• Tailor your permalinks (change the default)
– Post Name (/%postname%/) usually best practice
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-cheat-sheet-anatomy-of-a-url
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2262638/5-Basic-Tips-to-Improve-WordPress-for-SEO-and-the-User-Experience

10. Topic Structure
Home
Link = Topical Relationship
Categories: “Big,” Top-Level Topics, Likely General
Content on specific subtopics that gets down into the
nitty gritty, interlinks to promote next steps
http://http://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-vs-deep-hierarchy/

11. Keywords
• What you want your site to be visible for
• Queries that users type into search engines
– Tap expressed interests
– Deliver what users are looking for
• For inspiration:
–
–
–
–
Article topics
Updating existing content
Creating categories or sections of content
Targeting social media
• Remember: put keywords first!
Image credit: bubblews.com

12. Keyword Research Sources
•
•
•
•
http://www.google.com/insights/
http://www.google.com/trends/
http://www.semrush.com/
Google search with ~keyword to see terms
Google considers synonyms (resulting SERP
shows related words in bold)
• http://www.youtube.com/keyword_tool
• Analytics, Webmaster Tools, keyword lists

13. The Optimized Page
URL
Title Tag
http://www.middle.edu/prospective-students/midwest-college/
Meta Description
H1 Tag
Image Alt Tag
Body Content
H2 Tag
Midwest College| University of the Middle
Discover the Midwest college you're looking for at University of the
Middle, a Midwestern school offering students the right education
for today's world.
Midwest College
_______ Midwest
college _______.
The university ____
________________
________ school
in the Midwest.
Photo with
Alt Tag:
Midwest
college
campus
Choosing a Midwestern College
__________________
________________ St. Louis,
Missouri colleges. __________
_______.

14. Author Authority
• Identify article or post’s author whenever
possible
– Link to author profile on your site
http://searchengineland.com/secret-staying-relevant-authorship-184815
https://plus.google.com/authorship

15. Author Authority
• Connect author identification with Google+
profile
• Optimize Google+ profile
(good headshot photo,
be in circles with influencers,
be active, etc.)
– (rel=“author”) tag
<a href="https://plus.google.com/
Profile?rel=author">Google</a>
– link from Google+ profile
http://searchengineland.com/secret-staying-relevant-authorship-184815
https://plus.google.com/authorship
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2539557?hl=en

16. Duplicate Content
• Duplicate content can hinder findability, user
comprehension and trust
• Can make search engines unable to distinguish
the most relevant content, causing them not
to display any of the site’s content in search
results
• The essential rule: every URL
must contain unique, valuable
content.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world
http://meetcontent.com/blog/duplicate-content-bad-web/

17. Sitemaps
HTML Sitemap
• Made for users to navigate
• No more than ~100 URLs
• Use global <a href> format
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/siteindex
XML Sitemap
• Helps spiders find more pages
• Uploaded to the root directory
• Submitted to Webmaster Tools
http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html
http://www.sitemaps.org/
http://www.seomoz.org/q/big-site-seo-to-maintain-html-sitemaps-or-scrap-them-in-the-era-of-xml

18. Other XML Sitemaps
• News http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=2527688
• Video http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=80472
http://wordpress.org/plugins/xml-sitemaps-for-videos/
• Mobile http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=8493
http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-mobile-sitemap/
• Images http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=178636
http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-image-sitemap/
• Tools for Building Sitemaps
–
–
–
–
–
–
Yoast SEO Plug-In
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/bing-sitemap-plugin-beta-f50bebf5
http://code.google.com/p/googlesitemapgenerator/
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
http://gsitecrawler.com/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
http://searchengineland.com/a-primer-on-how-to-get-the-most-out-of-sitemaps-152092
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/do-sitemaps-effect-crawlers

19. More Than Words…
News
Video
Social Media
Information pulled
from the web
Images

20. Images
• Search engines can’t “see” images when
crawling a page.
– Use descriptive, keyword-focused alt text (alt=“”)
– Descriptive file names
• Alt tags for usability and
ADA compliance
(e.g., screen readers)
Fill it in!

21. Video
•
•
•
•
Drives user engagement
Social/community
Visibility in SERP
Titles, descriptions,
transcripts
• Video page is a
“normal” page

22. Visibility across Devices
• Optimize for mobile
– Let your site be wherever your users are
• Responsive design goes with the flow
– Show essentially the same content to all users, no
matter where they’re looking

23. Page Speed
• Quick-loading site = good user experience
• Lower bounce rates
• Ranking factor, helps spiders to index more
content
• Just a couple of the many ways
to prepare content for speed:
– Optimize images
– Enable compression
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/optimizing-page-speed-actionable-tips-for-seos-and-web-developers
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/site-speed/

24. Leverage Monitoring
• Monitoring a site alerts you when something
is wrong.
• Monitor internal search queries and organic
search queries for new content ideas
http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/beating-the-panda-diagnosing-and-rescuing-a-clients-traffic/
http://searchengineland.com/the-seo-guide-to-getting-started-with-google-webmaster-tools-150345
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-updated-guide-to-google-webmaster-tools
http://searchengineland.com/deep-dive-into-bing-webmaster-tools-part-1-137778

25. Content must, ultimately, be great!
Teresa Lane
Image Credit: armedwithvisions.com
@teresaalane