This document discusses 7 common mistakes that can negatively impact a WordPress website's SEO performance: 1) Not conducting an SEO audit, 2) Poor crawling issues, 3) Bad website migrations, 4) On-site SEO issues in the Yoast SEO plugin, 5) Slow website speed, 6) Duplicate content problems, and 7) Missing important metrics tracking. The document provides examples and suggestions for avoiding each mistake to help WordPress sites succeed with SEO.

1. Avoiding The Mistakes That Could Kill Your Business
@petermeadit
Peter Mead

2. Peter Mead
Who am I?
* Been in Digital since 1997
* WordPress SEO Consultant
* Hands on, Technical, Strategic
My Ethos?
* Communication,
* Community,
* Culture.
My Contacts?
* Peter Mead iT
* Melbourne SEO Meetup @petermeadit

3. WordPress SEO Mistakes That Kill
Top 7
1. Not doing SEO Audit
2. Poor crawling
3. Bad Migration
4. Yoast SEO on-site Issues
5. Slow Website Speed
6. Duplicate Content
7. Missing metrics
@petermeadit

4. 1. Not doing SEO Audit
Audit before your campaign?
No time; find issues as we go.
What problems lies ahead?
Help learn more about SEO
Pay a pro to do an audit?
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5. SEMrush Data study for common audit issues
SEMrush Collected Anonymous data from the Audit tool
Q: What are the most common on-page technical SEO issues?
The data:
● 100,000 websites
● 450 million pages
● Top % of sites affected
● If 25% are WordPress
● Infer 25,000 WP sites
Link: SEMrush Audit tool
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6. The stats, percentage of sites with issues?
Link: SEMrush Audit Data
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7. Title tags, meta description issues very common
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8. Broken links, broken external and internal links
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9. H1 tags
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10. Bloated Themes, & missing language declaration
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11. Audit regularly, use good tools
Some good tools:
SEMrush
Moz
Screaming frog
Google Search Console
Bing Webmaster Tools
Educate yourself and Learn more about the issues
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12. Definitive DIY Advanced Audit
Alan Bleiweiss - Checklist Spreadsheet with percentage scores
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13. 2. Poor Crawling
Blocked crawlers?
Crawl errors in GSC
Block .js & .css in robots.txt
Code in Theme for Tabs?
Noindex in Yoast SEO?
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14. Less can be more in robots.txt
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Learn: SEObook robots.txt tutorial - Aaron Wall

15. Edit your robots.txt file with Yoast SEO
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16. 3. Bad Migration
Ask Why migrate?
A new domain!
Better URL structure!
Website Redesign
Change of CMS
Redesign over 30%
Looks like a new site
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17. Migration strategy
A website migration strategy is key!
All migrations cause re-indexing
Afterwards Monitor URLs for crawl errors
HTTPS poor 301s, old site still reachable
SSL migration plan - Aleyda Solis
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18. Use Redirection Plugin
Redirection plugin vs .htaccess file… management vs speed
Plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/
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19. 4. Yoast SEO Onsite Issues
A plugin helps with on-site SEO
Yoast SEO for on-site SEO
Can use All in one SEO Pack
Red is stop, green is go? Not always.
It’s a guide, to help your on-site SEO.
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20. Beyond the Yoast SEO traffic lights
Learn more about on-site SEO
Improve your titles & H1 tags
Name images, and ALT attributes
Use friendly URLs for blog posts
Internal and external links for juice
Would you click on a link in 1st sentence vs footer
Google’s Reasonable Surfer Patent - Bill Slawski
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21. Panda has a strong right hook
Bad on-site SEO, Panda #25 hit in March 2013
Client thought SEO sucked until 2016! A redesigned site & improved content
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22. 5. Slow Website Speed
Web server slow response times
Poor Theme design, too many Plugins
Large files & images
Do you rush into AMP?
https://www.webpagetest.org/
https://tools.pingdom.com/
https://gtmetrix.com/
@petermeadit

23. Fast site slow
Browse to Site: realestate.com.au feels fast; but the tools say it’s slow
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24. PageSpeed Insights
PageSpeed ranking factor 2009
PageSpeed Insights tool
Not a speed test!
It’s a score out of 100
A lower score mean a slower site?
100/100 may not be a faster site?
Learn About PageSpeed Insights
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25. Waterfall vs perception of speed
Long list of files to load. What's in waterfall?
Not easy to fix, may need a Theme redesign.
Key is to make your site feel faster.
Use a Lazy Load Plugin
Compress images with WP Smush
WP Super Cache Plugin or WP Rocket - Paid
Resource: Use SSL & HTTP/2 - Jon Henshaw
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26. What a Cache Plugin can do
Caching skips
processing heavy
PHP scripts;
serves static HTML
files direct from
Apache :)
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27. Check GSC Crawl Stats, another speed check
How long for crawler to download the HTML
Under 350 milliseconds is a good measure
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28. 6. Duplicate Content
Duplicate Content Myth
But it can cause problems
Which page to optimise?
Pages with similar meanings, near duplicate,
can cause Cannibalization of similar content
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29. Beating duplication
Canonical to pass link juice like a 301
Noindex taxonomies or optimize them
Use internal links to to definitive pages
Don’t repeat blog topics, be unique
Webinar: avoid cannibalization - Dawn Anderson
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30. 7. Missing Metrics
Setup:
Google Search Console
Analytics, Adwords,
Bing Webmaster Tools
Plugin Insert Headers and Footers
Then use Google Tag Manager
Don’t bother Developers with tracking code
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31. Metrics for important business goals
What User Actions Contribute to the Goals of the Business?
Don’t use goals to measure useless metrics, use events, tag manager.
Rankings come and go, define the metrics that matter
Using money in the bank metrics? Can be hard to measure.
Plugin MonsterInsights formerly Yoast Analytics if you need inline Analytics
@petermeadit

32. Avoid WordPress SEO Mistakes That Kill
Dig deeper into WordPress
Don’t just assume it’s all ok!
Some mistakes are deadly.
What kind of risks to take?
Learn & upskill, get Technical.
Reach out to me with questions.
@petermeadit