[Jackk]

I spoke with a SEO consultant at a networking event a while back and he said to me that the most important information along with keywords should be higher up in the source code. He showed me an example of his site and he had built it using absolute positioning so that the H1 tags and other priority content were about 5 lines down from the top.

I have since looked at my own site which uses Wordpress and my header is filled with if statements leaving my content very low in the source code.

Do you know if this makes my site worst for SEO if so how do I fix it, or is there a way for me to do a php include_head tag?

or any elaboration would be appreciated, thanks.

Here is a link to my site http://tinyurl.com/6bvu3mk

This post has been edited by Jackk: 17 October 2011 - 09:31 PM

[MikeChipshop]

If statements are processed before the HTML is output to the browser hence you could have two hundred if statements and they still won't have any effect on what the search engine sees.

[oakleaves]

^^ Good point

I would say search engines love wordpress from my experience..

[Gibson]

There's loads of very skilled people working on Wordpress. I would guess it is pretty SE friendly based on that.

[Gibson]

MikeChipshop, on 17 October 2011 - 09:53 PM, said:

If statements are processed before the HTML is output to the browser hence you could have two hundred if statements and they still won't have any effect on what the search engine sees.

Yeah exactly. View it with the style sheet off if you want a slightly more accurate impression of what the search engine would see. You won't see the "if" statements appearing anywhere here, because as Mike says, they are processed before rendering html.

[Design Fan]

I think the most important thing is the title tag and the meta tag
for key words.

[Jason Dexter]

Design Fan, on 18 October 2011 - 05:17 AM, said:

I think the most important thing is the title tag and the meta tag
for key words.

Oh ******* hell.

There are many factors on a website which, when all optimised and used effectively, can make your website more relevant to a chosen niche or market.

But, content is always king. Having a keyword stuffed ttle isn't going to do you any favours.

OP:

Why the hell would Google do that? Does this guy have any concrete proof that it works?

I just don't get it. I've never seen a website do it.

Wordpress is mega for SEO, and because you can churn out new content which is then pinged to Google, it helps getting a website indexed fast and attract some nice long-tail keywords

[Design Fan]

@Dexter
I said title and meta tags are good FOR KEYWORDS.
Of course content is the king.

[Jason Dexter]

Design Fan, on 18 October 2011 - 09:31 AM, said:

@Dexter
I said title and meta tags are good FOR KEYWORDS.
Of course content is the king.

I jumped the gun and went for the attack as I thought you were a spammer, so I am sorry haha.

[robsticles]

If you google reviews on the major open source CMS you will find that it's actually one of the most SEO friendly CMS out there.

Why not try some of the free SEO plugins available? I use Yoast's WordPress SEO, can be easily downloaded and installed through the worpdress interface

[Design Fan]

Jason Dexter, on 18 October 2011 - 09:52 AM, said:

I jumped the gun and went for the attack as I thought you were a spammer, so I am sorry haha.

Hahaaaah, I don't mind at all.

[kelta]

Not at all infact wordpress is a great way to make websites

[Gibson]

kelta, on 19 October 2011 - 10:13 AM, said:

Not at all infact wordpress is a great way to make websites

It is indeed. The only thing I object to is when people automatically crack out wordpress for a site which requires say one section of one page to be updatable. In those instances it seems like overkill.

[MikeChipshop]

Gibson, on 19 October 2011 - 04:31 PM, said:

It is indeed. The only thing I object to is when people automatically crack out wordpress for a site which requires say one section of one page to be updatable. In those instances it seems like overkill.

Indeed.
Although something i had to smack myself for thinking of the other day lol

[Gibson]

MikeChipshop, on 19 October 2011 - 04:37 PM, said:

i had to smack myself

Any excuse

[rallport]

If you're using a well know theme of have created your own I'd say Wordpress is fine for SEO? However, there are themes out there that actually suck for SEO. Make sure you have the basics in there when changing/making themes.

[Renaissance-Design]

Gibson, on 19 October 2011 - 04:31 PM, said:

It is indeed. The only thing I object to is when people automatically crack out wordpress for a site which requires say one section of one page to be updatable. In those instances it seems like overkill.

That sounds like a job for Unify.

[Jonbey]

Wordpress can be great for SEO. The SEO consultant does not sound like he knows what he is talking about thb.

"the most important information along with keywords should be higher up in the source code"

Maybe 10 years ago? keywords? If he is talking about META keyword, run, run fast!

[MikeChipshop]

Jonbey, on 21 October 2011 - 12:44 PM, said:

Wordpress can be great for SEO. The SEO consultant does not sound like he knows what he is talking about thb.

"the most important information along with keywords should be higher up in the source code"

Maybe 10 years ago? keywords? If he is talking about META keyword, run, run fast!

To be fair, the higher up the content, the more weight it carries. But i get what you're saying.

[Jackk]

Im glad Wordpress is SEO friendly I was a bit weary of it for a while.

Do any of you know of any good resources or can you list a few of the most effective ways to improve SEO?

[MikeChipshop]

Jackk, on 21 October 2011 - 06:38 PM, said:

Do any of you know of any good resources or can you list a few of the most effective ways to improve SEO?

YOAST plugin is pretty damn good.

[rallport]

Jonbey, on 21 October 2011 - 12:44 PM, said:

Wordpress can be great for SEO. The SEO consultant does not sound like he knows what he is talking about thb.

"the most important information along with keywords should be higher up in the source code"

Maybe 10 years ago? keywords? If he is talking about META keyword, run, run fast!

Nar, what he's saying is perfectly correct. The correct name for it is "content source ordering". i.e. place you most important content towards the top of your source code.

It's definately not the most important thting though.

[rallport]

Jackk, on 21 October 2011 - 06:38 PM, said:

Im glad Wordpress is SEO friendly I was a bit weary of it for a while.

Do any of you know of any good resources or can you list a few of the most effective ways to improve SEO?

It seems to get said at least once a day in this forum, but ............. "write quality content that people will want to link to". An SEO plugin can only help so far, if you're not writing good stuff then it's pointless.

[a1digitalmedia]

WordPress is generally very good for SEO. If you set-up a custom permalink structure such as '/%category%/%postname%/' you can make your site even friendlier. I wouldn't worry too much about how high your HTML tags etc are, I would concentrate on creating good quality content for your website, generating a targeted following and create a strategic and scalable link building campaign.

[SeoInVogue]

Jackk, on 17 October 2011 - 09:30 PM, said:

I spoke with a SEO consultant at a networking event a while back and he said to me that the most important information along with keywords should be higher up in the source code. He showed me an example of his site and he had built it using absolute positioning so that the H1 tags and other priority content were about 5 lines down from the top.

I have since looked at my own site which uses Wordpress and my header is filled with if statements leaving my content very low in the source code.

Do you know if this makes my site worst for SEO if so how do I fix it, or is there a way for me to do a php include_head tag?

or any elaboration would be appreciated, thanks.

Here is a link to my site http://tinyurl.com/6bvu3mk

Absolutely not !
Wordpress is actually very good for SEO, you get a lot of plugins which saves a lot of time and effort from users side. As for the point of having php code in the header is concerned you shouldn't worry about it as search engines doesn't concerns with the code that you are having in the website. It just looks for meta tags, keyword and the quality of content that you are offering!

[neil0wen]

I have a friend, that has a wordpress site that generates lots of visitors. Wouldn't worry about too much about Wordpress plugins for SEO. He recently removed his and if anything, his traffic has increased!

[rallport]

It really doesn't matter what platform you;re using to publish content as it produces valid html and you have good content.

[Cristebo]

I also can say that search engines love wordpress, some wordpress themes can have some problems and there your content can be viewed in source code at the bottom..but remember - this just one from hundreds of factors that Google care's about.

[MikeChipshop]

At the end of the day WordPress is only as good as the theme developer who built the theme you're using.

[prash patel]

...

This post has been edited by MikeChipshop: 22 December 2011 - 04:57 PM

[Gareth Daine]

Hi,

First off Google loves fresh, relevant and authoritative content. That's the first thing you need to be getting right. Write for users first, search engines second. That said, there are important things you do need to consider when coding your site.

1. Your title tags need to be descriptive of your content. In terms of keywords, yes it's a good idea to have your main keyword phrase in there but it's more important that the title of the web page clearly describes the content on that page.
2. Descriptions, i.e. meta descriptions, need to also be descriptive of the content of the page. Again, you can place keywords in the description but make sure you don't stuff the description with keywords and also that the user can understand it. Keep them down to 160 characters or less.
3. Make sure your document is semantic. That simply means that each element best describes the data that is being presented. HTML5 can help even more with this.
4. Valid code helps too, as long as it isn't to the detriment of the user experience.
5. Make sure you have a consistent and well structured heading hirarachy. h1 then h2 then h3 and so on. Again, HTML5 can help organise this even better than previously with HTML 4.01.
6. Having the important content display first in the document is a good practice. Concerning WordPress, as long as you code your own theme or you use a well coded theme you can achieve this no problem.
7. Make sure your content is easily accessible. It is a good idea to make your website responsive too, so that all users on different types of devices can access your content. Navigation is important for content accessibility. Your internal linking structure can help you rank higher.

These are just a few basic pointers but there are many more and things change all the time.

Hope this helps. Oh, and in answer to your question WordPress is really good for SEO.

[jamesosix]

Gibson, on 19 October 2011 - 04:31 PM, said:

It is indeed. The only thing I object to is when people automatically crack out wordpress for a site which requires say one section of one page to be updatable. In those instances it seems like overkill.

what? why?

I am doing 140 website for a company right now and at least half of them are going to use wordpress and they are very much like static sites. Whats the problem? It saves time, you can get plugins (such as yoast seo plugin), you can chop, change and generally spend less time doing more. I think that can only be a good thing.

Also, if we are talking about good google SERPS then really every page on any given site should be 'updatable' to a degree.

OP:
Wordpress is great for seo. I started one of these 140 websites last week and its already on the first page of google for a strong keyword.

[MikeChipshop]

jamesosix, on 12 January 2012 - 12:22 PM, said:

what? why?

I am doing 140 website for a company right now and at least half of them are going to use wordpress and they are very much like static sites. Whats the problem? It saves time, you can get plugins (such as yoast seo plugin), you can chop, change and generally spend less time doing more. I think that can only be a good thing.

If you plan on updating frequently or playing with the system then fair enough but to use WP for a one page static site is total sledgehammer >> Nut stuff.

[rallport]

Gareth Daine, on 22 December 2011 - 06:13 PM, said:

Hi,

First off Google loves fresh, relevant and authoritative content. That's the first thing you need to be getting right. Write for users first, search engines second. That said, there are important things you do need to consider when coding your site.

1. Your title tags need to be descriptive of your content. In terms of keywords, yes it's a good idea to have your main keyword phrase in there but it's more important that the title of the web page clearly describes the content on that page.
2. Descriptions, i.e. meta descriptions, need to also be descriptive of the content of the page. Again, you can place keywords in the description but make sure you don't stuff the description with keywords and also that the user can understand it. Keep them down to 160 characters or less.
3. Make sure your document is semantic. That simply means that each element best describes the data that is being presented. HTML5 can help even more with this.
4. Valid code helps too, as long as it isn't to the detriment of the user experience.
5. Make sure you have a consistent and well structured heading hirarachy. h1 then h2 then h3 and so on. Again, HTML5 can help organise this even better than previously with HTML 4.01.
6. Having the important content display first in the document is a good practice. Concerning WordPress, as long as you code your own theme or you use a well coded theme you can achieve this no problem.
7. Make sure your content is easily accessible. It is a good idea to make your website responsive too, so that all users on different types of devices can access your content. Navigation is important for content accessibility. Your internal linking structure can help you rank higher.

These are just a few basic pointers but there are many more and things change all the time.

Hope this helps. Oh, and in answer to your question WordPress is really good for SEO.

I'm not sure if you're focusing on good web building best practices or a ticklist for SEO - as it's the SEO forum I'll assume the latter

Semantic document - have seen little/no evidence this makes any difference to rankings currently.

Valid code - biut of a none issue - the site can be coded awfully and still rank. The only thing is if that invalid code stops the site from displaying.

Responsive web design - good poractice, but 0 effect (at the minute) on ranking.

Unfortunately, the majority of SEO and pure postions in the results is heavily biased towards the number and type of backlinks your site has - which we all know gets abused.

In a perfect world Google will rank sites on all the above points you've raised - just not at the moment

[rallport]

jamesosix, on 12 January 2012 - 12:22 PM, said:

what? why?

I am doing 140 website for a company right now and at least half of them are going to use wordpress and they are very much like static sites. Whats the problem? It saves time, you can get plugins (such as yoast seo plugin), you can chop, change and generally spend less time doing more. I think that can only be a good thing.

Also, if we are talking about good google SERPS then really every page on any given site should be 'updatable' to a degree.

OP:
Wordpress is great for seo. I started one of these 140 websites last week and its already on the first page of google for a strong keyword.

* facepalm *

For your single page served using Wordpress the amount of code running the background is scary. As a developer, I'm not a fan of bloat at all. For a single page, that's exactly what Worpdress is, bloat. It's like using Magento for a store with 20 products

[rallport]

a1digitalmedia, on 01 December 2011 - 03:59 PM, said:

If you set-up a custom permalink structure such as '/%category%/%postname%/' you can make your site even friendlier.

/%postname%/ is generally accepted as the best structure. Short, more relevant url slugs are better. Have a look at the Yoast website - he's got his slugs spot on - very short, succienct and focused for every post.

However, if you;re using an older version of Wordpress (which you have no excuses for anyway, if you are ...) the latter structure is highly intensive database wise and it's advisable to include the post id in there somewhere.

This post has been edited by rallport: 12 January 2012 - 06:21 PM

[oakleaves]

rallport, on 12 January 2012 - 06:20 PM, said:

/%postname%/

Get's my vote