Presented at WordCamp Calgary 2016 (#wcyyc). In this talk, you’re going to walk away with a keen understanding of how to setup your website to be search friendly, and how to avoid some common WordPress mistakes that might make search engines dislike you!

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YOUR LOCAL BUSINESS
PRIMER
DANA DITOMASO

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Why?

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You need to speak
Google’s language.

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Google doesn’t care that
you’re the biggest,
oldest, or “best”.

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Google also doesn’t care
for you to repeat the word
“roofer” on your site
18 times.

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Time to teach Google.

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Let’s start with plugins.

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Yoast SEO

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A speed plugin (helps).

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Redirection.

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Your site must be
mobile-friendly.
https://www.google.ca/webmasters/tools/
mobile-friendly/

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Things to do in Yoast

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1. Configure everything.

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2. Note when you make
changes.

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3. Make smart category &
tag decisions.

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4. Don’t waste Google’s time
on stuff you don’t want
to rank.

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5. Submit your site map in
Google Search Console.

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Title tags matter.

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Stop making your home page
title tag say “home”.

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URLs matter.

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Please, please fix your
permalinks.

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And use your redirects.

27. What happens without redirects.

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Speed matters.

29. https://gtmetrix.com

30. Well this is awkward.

31. We see these problems all the time.

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Schema matters.

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Schema tells the search
engines what your
data means.

34. https://developers.google.com/schemas/

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You can use a plugin.
You don’t have to.

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Some common schemas.

37. https://www.google.com/webmasters/markup-helper/u/0/

38. Use the highlighter to mark up the right sections.

39. Grab the HTML you need.

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Or, use the schema.org
website.

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If you have a business
address, you must use Local
Business markup.

42. Nice hack for events. Thanks @whitespark!
http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/82-how-to-get-google-
calendar-events-in-the-search-results

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Protip: Check that it’s
working.

44. You put your site in Google Search Console, right?

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Set up goals.

46. https://en-ca.wordpress.org/plugins/gravity-forms-google-
analytics-event-tracking/

47. Don’t forget to add your goal in Google Analytics.

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Done everything?

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Now you can optimize your
ALT tags.

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THANK YOU!
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