Wordpress SEO vs Regular Site SEO
-
Hey Mozzers
I'm building a Wordpress-powered site (self hosted on different domain).
I know there are different plug-ins and whatnot for Wordpress SEO, but what exactly am I getting myself into? Am I required to use these plug-ins even if I already know how to do regular SEO on-page coding, or are they mainly dumbed-down tools for mom-bloggers to use?
Am I still able to use Google Analytics as I am with a regular site?
What else is there to think about?Thanks!
-
Another Thumps Up vote for Yoast.
-
I understand your thinking, however this is one of those times where you don't have to do it the hard way. Meaning you take advantage of the ease of use that a plugin provides, while still maintaining your special touches (the art of seo). Like Mike said, plugins will make it easier even if you know what you are doing.
My recommendation is Yoast Wordpress SEO (free). The developer is totally devoted to this plugin and stays on top of all issues, as well as trends. If you are going to be using video on your site, you should buy the Video sitemap plugin from Yoast too. It integrates right in perfectly and adds the video sitemap. It also automatically codes your videos so that they show up in the SERPs with a link back to your site. After building hundreds of WordPress sites, I have tried all the major plugins, but this one is the most reliable.
Yoast also has an Analytics plugin that enhances your Google Analytics data automatically, giving you more details than the standard site. You sound experienced, so you may not need/ want it, but you should at least look at it.
-
Got to love to Yoast!
-
I use the All-In-One SEO plugin. Another popular plugin is Yoast.
Wordpress can create a lot of duplicate content issues because it generates things like tag pages, category pages, and archive pages automatically. No-indexing most of these is a good idea, unless you are going to spend time creating unique content for them.
There are also plugins that make regular on-page SEO optimization tasks easier, such as adding robots exclusions, Google+ butons, etc. without having to muck around with the code.
-
Wordpress has some plugins that help in automating many of the processes of on-page SEO. It just makes the process a bit easier. I personally like how wordpress deals with optimization and I am not a "non-SEO" person. I would just research the different SEO plugins and find which one you like the best. They all work pretty much the same with some doing a better job than others. I would give you a recommendation, but I haven't worked with wordpress for a while and have been out of the loop.
Google Analytics is definitely doable with wordpress. All you have to do is place the analytics tag at the footer of your wordpress page. Easy as pie.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Analytics Set-Up for site with both http & https pages
We have a client that migrated to https last September. The site uses canonicals pointing to the https version. The client IT team is reluctant to put 301 redirects from the non-secure to the secure and we are not sure why they object. We ran a screaming frog report and it is showing both URLs for the same page (http and https). The non-secure version has a canonical pointing to the secure version. For every secure page there is a non-secure version in ScreamingFrog so Google must be ignoring the canonical and still indexing the page however, when we run a site: we see that most URLs are the secure version. At that time we did not change the Google Analytics setup option to use: "https" instead of "http" BUT GA appears to be recording data correctly. Yesterday we set up a new profile and selected "https" but our question is: Does the GAnalytics http/https version make a difference if so, what difference is it?
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB1 -
What determines the page order of site:domain?
Whenever I use site:domain.com to check what's index, it's pretty much always in the same order. I gather from this, the order is not random. I'm also reasonably certainly it isn't related to any page strength signals or ranking results. So, does anyone know why the pages are displayed in the order they are? What information does the order of the pages tell me? Thanks, Ruben
Reporting & Analytics | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Why does a selection of sites I have written guest posts on not come up on my link analysis?
I have done a few guests posts on different sites and they are not coming up in my link analysis report.
Reporting & Analytics | | meteorelectrical
We created an info graphic on one particular site and this site isn't coming up on the link analysis report. Would there be a reason for this. I ran a check on the sites code and it doesnt contain "nofollow" as i originally thought this was the problem. Here is an example of our work on a site that isn't coming up on the analysis report. http://www.electriciansblog.co.uk/2013/10/energy-saving-using-led-lighting/ Thanks0 -
Local site rankings have dropped off first page but Universal went up.
My site was performing first page locally on 6 of 20 keywords, and universally on 3 of 20 keywords. We started a link building campaign and optimization about 3 weeks ago. When I looked at the rankings today I was happy to see that 16 of 20 keywords were in the top 20 rankings universally, but not happy to see that only 1 of the 25 words were ranking locally now. I lost my local ranking on 5 very important keywords. I realize that you can not rank first page for both local and organic but its as if I traded my first page local ranking for a universal ranking that appears lower on the page. Maybe someone could point me in the right direction.
Reporting & Analytics | | whmgatx0 -
WMT and 'Links To Your Site'
Anyone else find that there are, almost continually, links added to the 'Links To Your Site' list from years ago that weren't previously reflected? I'm seeing links that were added to directories in 2008 (by whoever was doing the SEO then) only showing in the last week or so when these links weren't in the list a few months ago. I don't suppose there's much I can do - it's just annoying in that it adds to more people to contact to have nonsense removed.
Reporting & Analytics | | Martin_S0 -
Question for SEO experts!
I am checking my competition with all the metrics available and I have no clue why we are not coming up higher in ranking on Google. It's been 3 months and we've been bouncing between 9 and 7 position. One competitor just came out of nowhere with almost 600 internal links and few external links and occupied 3rd spot. I've built pretty good portfolio of links with links even coming from Google for crying out loud. My on page optimization is very good, we've even passed W3C with no errors. At least 3 of our competitors above us have less Domain Authority, Page Authority, Back links for external domains, number of external domains, etc... Not sure what is going on. We are not really trying to be the top dog in Google all the time, but it is the principle of a thing. Keyword is Laser Marking. Our domain starts with cms. Don't want to type the whole URL because Google might crawl (maybe a bit of paranoid at this point LOL) Any suggestions?
Reporting & Analytics | | DmitryP0 -
Can I find results for my SEO rankings over an extended period of time?
I was hoping to put a report together chronicling my SEO performance over the last 2 months and couldn't find a place to see prior information.
Reporting & Analytics | | AppNeta0 -
Something strange going on with new client's site...
Please forgive my stupidity if there is something obvious here which I have missed (I keep assuming that must be the case), but any advice on this would be much appreciated. We've just acquired a new client. Despite having a site for plenty of time now they did not previously have analytics with their last company (I know, a crime!). They've been with us for about a month now and we've managed to get them some great rankings already. To be fair, the rankings weren't bad before us either. Anyway. They have multiple position one rankings for well searched terms both locally and nationally. One would assume therefore that a lot of their traffic would come from Google right? Not according to their analytics. In fact, very little of it does... instead, 70% of their average 3,000 visits per month comes from just one referring site. A framed version of their site which is through reachlocal, which itself doesn't rank for any of their terms. I don't get it... The URL of the site is: www.namgrass.co.uk (ignore there being a .com too, that's a portal as they cover other countries). The referring site causing me all this confusion is: http://namgrass.rtrk.co.uk/ (see source code at the bottom for the reachlocal thing). Now I know reach local certainly isn't sending them all that traffic, so why does GA say it is... and what is this reachlocal thing anyway?? I mean, I know what reachlocal is, but what gives here with regards to it? Any ideas, please??
Reporting & Analytics | | SteveOllington0