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vangogh
02-09-2010, 01:10 AM
I found this post on seo for WordPress and thought I'd share. It's called WordPress SEO: The Only Guide You Need (http://www.viperchill.com/wordpress-seo/). Now I wouldn't say it's the only guide you need, it probably will suffice for most people here.

Here and there throughout the article I'd disagree with the importance of something. For example adding meta keywords, but Glen Allsopp, the author, does know his stuff when it comes to both seo and WordPress. He's someone I think worth listening too.

One of the things I like about the post is it goes beyond the usual few basic things you see all over the place. There's some good ideas for writing content to attract links and about interlinking your posts. Personally I never publish a post that doesn't link back to some of my other posts. I don't consciously write content just so I can link, but while proofing and editing I look for things I wrote that make for a natural link to something I wrote before. Once you get in the habit of doing this it's pretty easy.

Quite a few of the things mentioned in the post are things you can set once and for the most part forget about. I think there's only one plugin mentioned, All In One SEO, which I use myself.

If you run a site on WordPress and aren't sure what to do when it comes to SEO, this would be a great place to start.

An older, yet still great post is WordPress SEO (http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/). I think I've linked to this one before and it's author, Joost de Valk, is also someone who knows both WordPress and SEO very well and someone who's also worth listening to.

jamestl2
02-13-2010, 03:52 AM
Honestly, I feel the article lost it's credibility right up to the "Use Alt Tags Religiously" heading, being as they don't exist.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree with other portions of the article, that's just what really killed it for me.

If someone's going to tout off writing an "SEO guide", they should at least understand the fundamentals of HTML.

Patrysha
02-13-2010, 09:48 AM
What do you mean they (alt tags) don't exist? Is it just the terminology?
using alt for pictures has been a recommendation for many years by many authors.

vangogh
02-13-2010, 05:25 PM
Patrysha technically it's not a tag. alt is an attribute on the image tag. Many people mistakenly call it a tag.

That really doesn't really change the credibility of the article though. James I think you're in webmaster-talk mode now. I agree it's better for people to use the correct terminology, but so many people call it a tag at this point that it's how others end up understanding it better.

If the article was about web development then maybe it would affect the credibility, but so many SEOs just call it an alt tag that I don't see it as a big deal.

rezzy
02-15-2010, 08:49 PM
Steven, I am curious, do SEO plugins enough to fully optimize a site? Or should we be doing more?

vangogh
02-15-2010, 11:26 PM
I don't think there is such a thing as a fully optimized site. SEO is just a subset of marketing and the only time you can stop marketing is when you don't want any more clients or customers.

WordPress does a lot of good things by default, especially if you tweak it a bit like changing the permalinks to something more useful than the default. The seo plugins mainly do things like let you add unique meta tags and have your page title be different from the page heading. You still have to take the time to write those though.

Other things you can do are work to make WordPress run faster. Theme developers for example can't possibly know what domain you're going to use so any time they would normally code the src to a css file or your rss feed they need to do it through a database call. But you know what your domain is and can replace those database calls with the actual url which would save load time.

Ultimately your success is still going to come down to creating content that people want to read and link to. The code itself can't do anything about that.

jamestl2
02-16-2010, 03:13 PM
WT mode? Sorry, didn't realize that I could be :D.

Patrysha, Steven summed it up nicely, it's an attribute, not a tag.

I wouldn't find it too big a deal either if someone isn't big on creating websites, doesn't worry about it too much. But in this case, the author clearly works on WP for a living, and seems to have been working within the realm of SEO for years.

Steve, I actually consider SEO as a subset of Web Design, which in turn is a portion of Web Development as a whole, which is why I find it important to know the basics when you write "article guides" on advising other people about what they should do with their websites. So SEO is a portion of Web Development to me.

vangogh
02-16-2010, 04:06 PM
Funny. A few of us here are developers, but remember most people here aren't. :)

I agree the author should really know better, but in truth most of the time in SEO circles they end up being called alt tags. It's pretty common. It's developers like us who tend to be sticklers for calling them by their proper name.

SEO and design/development are definitely linked, but people enter both fields from all sorts of backgrounds. Lots of SEOs aren't developers at all. They might hire a developer and then focus on the aspects of SEO that cross more into marketing.

ViperChill
02-28-2010, 03:22 AM
Hi guys,

Just a quick one.

First of all, Steven, thanks a lot for the kind words and sharing the article here. When I started SEO back in 2006 you were one of the first people I came across, so you must have been in this industry way longer than most. I have always admired your community interaction online.

I had a few people telling me "I can't believe you mentioned alt tags" and I didn't quite get what they were saying. Finally I understand and have updated the post. I wish people would have told me rather than simply moan, so I have you guys to thank for pointing me in the right direction.

Thanks again, and I hope you guys are doing well :)

vangogh
02-28-2010, 04:42 AM
Hey Glenn. Thanks for the kind words. I think we both started online around a similar time and it wasn't long before I came across you as well. Always a pleasure to say hello.

Calling them alt tags doesn't bother me. It's so common for people to call them that. I always look at it in the context of the post. If you're teaching me html or web development in general, then yeah, I do want you to call them attributes, since it's important to what you're trying to teach.

If you're teaching me about seo then either is fine. Technically they are attributes and not tags, but ultimately the important thing is you communicate whatever you were trying to communicate and in the case of seo that's really more about how to use them and less what they're technically called.

I break rules of grammar all the time while still being able to communicate. The communication is the important thing. In a way the attribute tag thing is a lot like txt speak. It depends who you're talking to whether or not you can use them to communicate.

Thanks for stopping by Glenn. Hope we'll see you again here.