Show Notes
This week, we look at site structure and SEO. How does site architecture affect your search rank? We look at keyword research, internal linking, URL structure, permalinks, categories and tags, 301 redirects, setting up call-to-actions throughout the site, user experience, and more.
One of the more valuable episodes we've done this year, especially if you're trying to get your site to rank higher.
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This Week's WordPress Panel
Jackie D'Elia: from Jackie D'Elia Design
Lee Jackson: from LeeJacksonDev.com
Brian Jackson: from Woorkup
John Locke: from Lockedown SEO
Jonathan Denwood: from WP-Tonic.com
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Our episode this week is sponsored by LiquidWeb. Liquid Web is offering a 33% discount for your first 6 months of managed WordPress hosting.
Head over to https://LiquidWeb.com/wordpress and use the code WPTONIC33 at checkout for your discount.
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Table of Contents for Episode 171
0:00 Podcast Intros
2:57 WordPress News Story #1: Amazon S3 Outage Hits WordPress Businesses, Disrupting Services and Support
https://wptavern.com/amazon-s3-outage-hits-wordpress-businesses-disrupting-service-and-support
11:05 WordPress News Story #2: NextGEN Gallery Patches Critical SQL Injection Vulnerability
https://wptavern.com/nextgen-gallery-patches-critical-sql-injection-vulnerability
23:10 WordPress News Story #3: Behind the Scenes – Launching a Premium WordPress Coupon Plugin
https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-coupon-plugin/
32:39 Main Topic: Site Architecture and SEO.
33:08 When is site structure discussed in the design process with different agencies?
35:14 Organizing content, 301 redirects, and content audits.
39:30 The value of organizing menus, internal links, and user experience.
46:24 When you add internal linking and planning user personas with call to actions, then the magic happens.
49:03 The chicken and egg problem: when you don't work on your site, you don't get business from your site, so you don't do any work on your site.
51:42 Our advice on using categories and tags for internal linking and SEO. What to index and what to noindex.
57:37 More on tags and our thoughts on breadcrumbs as internal navigation.
1:00:34 Getting users to their destination in as few clicks as possible.
1:02:26 How effective are footer links for internal linking? Should you use these with optimized anchor text to increase your SEO for certain pages?
1:04:52 What is the correlation between social shares, traffic and ranking? What strategy can you use to boost pages?
1:08:48 Does engagement, like comments, have a difference on SEO?
1:12:00 What is an ideal URL structure for SEO? How short or long should your URLs be for ideal ranking?
1:16:50 Are there pages that you should noindex in Yoast?
1:18:54 What are some tools you can use for keyword research?
1:21:16 Podcast outros.
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Links mentioned during the show:
Intercom: Customer Messaging Platform
What the Dormouse Said
https://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-Personal/dp/0143036769
SEMrush
WordPress SEO Checklist: 45 Tips for 2017
https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-seo-checklist/
KW Finder
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Find bonus content for this episode on the WP-Tonic website:
https://www.wp-tonic.com/podcast/172-site-architecture-seo/
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Subscribe to WP-Tonic on iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/wp-tonic-wordpress-podcast/id893083124?mt=2
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WP-Tonic is both a WordPress development and maintenance service, and the publisher of a weekly WordPress business podcast.