The other day I decided to check back with WordPress TV and see what cool stuff they’ve got there. And I did that quite in the nick of time because there was a really useful video (SEO WordPress one) on the homepage of WordPress TV. The video is called “Ira Pasternack, Milan Cole, & Sara Tetreault: SEO Discussion”. I really liked the video and ran the risk of re-publishing on my blog because it is so congenial to the mission that WebDesy.com is trying to complete, which is to education in terms of using WordPress and SEO. Just like the guys in the video say, if you decided to run your site on WordPress you’ve alredy made a very good decision for your site’s SEO. 🙂
Home page of the video.
Since they’ve raised a bunch of really interesting topics, I’d like to comment on a few of them.
PR does not guarantee high rankings
Despite the ubiquitous notion of PR, it does not affect your site that much. Many SEO gurus insist that you’re not supposed to take it into account while assessing a site’s performance and SEO value. Google itself says that PR affects, for the most part, how often your site is being indexed. And that’s about it. By the way, Gillian Muessig from SEOmoz emphasizes on that as well. So, don’t confuse PR with high rankings for your keyword. Many SEO newbies actually do that.
Don’t publish posts without checking them in Google Keywords Tool
Every single time you think about composing a post check it with Google Keyword Tool in order to see how competitive and searched for your keyword is. Doing that you’ll be able to decide whether it is a good idea to write about your chosen topic. Other than that you want to use the tool for the following reason. Sometimes you may be just using the wrong wording for a very popular topic. That’s the other reason why you need to bookmark the link to the keyword tool.
Use SEOmoz tools to see how well your site is optimized for a specific keyword
As an SEO you’ve most definitely have heard about SEOmoz and their tools. The tool in question is On-Page Optimization. You can just type in your page’s URL and the keyword that page is supposed to be optimized for. Once you’re done, just click the “Grade My On-page Optimization” link. In a few moments, it’ll provide you with the tips that you need to use for improving your on-page optimization. Some issues will be of high importance but some will be just some sort of recommendations and best practices.
Personal search
I personally landed into this hot water when I just started out as an SEO. I was searching in Google while logged in. Though you can do it if you just want to find some relevant info as an average Joe, it’s not the best idea to learn about your current rankings that way. 🙂 You need to either log out and continue searching or just use a tool for that. Thanks God, there’s lots of them out there such as SEO Administrator, SEOmoz’s Rank Tracker just to name a few.
200 Google ranking factors (on-site and off-site)
When you just start out as a newbie SEO, you strive to track down the factor that influences your site’s rankings most. And that’s usually PR. Like I said above, it’s not the case whatsoever. You need to always keep in mind that those 200 factors work in a combination. Some influence more, some – less. Nobody (perhaps except for Matt Cutts and a few more guys) knows how exactly the Google algorithm works. As a rule of thumb, I’d recommend using the follow factors as primary ones: domain authority, mozRank (if you have access to it), and linking root domains.
Benefits of using Google Analytics
Though there are a whole lot of WordPress plugins and widgets for analyzing your site’s performance, to the best of my knowledge they just can’t beat Google Analytics. Sorry, bro. 🙂 The tool has so many useful and unique features that nobody else is even close to them. Plus it is free!
Using reviews for local search results (removing bad reviews)
As the guys in the video above said, it really makes sense to use reviews for promoting your site in local search. Sure thing, those reviews may be not exactly positive, but – as you know from the video if you’ve seen it by now – there are ways to take care of that as well.
Now, what ideas did you like from the video? Perhaps you’d like to elaborate on something?
