Finding a good wordpress web developer for SEO fixes

[chrisyak]

I have gotten a good audit done of my site now it is time to get the fixes done.

I have a developer I worked with for a long time that is good at coding and fixes on my site. However I am not confident in his abilities to execute some of the seo changes that need to be done.

Their are some common stuff he can tackle but when it comes to GWT and proper handling of 404's and 301's and other seo tasks I am not sure if he is the right choice.Maybe due to a lack of experience of dealing with the issues I have or is just not his specialty or web devs just don't know seo...lol....

Is obvious a lot of SEO's don't make the changes themselves but leave it up to the devs to handle it their suggestions and fixes. But from my experience devs are not so well versed in seo and you have a hard time knowing if they are doing it correct or can even do it.(of course they will say they can they want your cash and i understand that ). In particular a good amount of wordpress devs claim to know seo but i find that far from the truth.Even when guided to issues some of them will often leave you disappointed.

Sorry for my rant!

Now to my question , obviously not many SEO's make the actual code changes themselves (how i wish i knew a one that did) are their ones out their that do?

If not how do i find a good wordpress dev that can make proper seo changes and knows his stuff....example i need someone who can trouble shoot and track down some serious GWT I have and deal with some hardcore 404 & 301 issues . A lot claim to know but when push comes to shove I have been left disappointed.

Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions or recommendations.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Chris

I don't know who did the audit obviously, but just speaking from how I do it when I do an audit. I think the SEO should be willing to do a quick follow up review to see everything has been done correctly OR at least answer a few questions the dev might have.

You're right, most developers aren't going to understand everything as in depth, so that's why SEOs and Devs need to work together to get things done!

So I'd ask the SEO if they'd be able to help see it's done correctly. I would expect of course to pay for that short amount of time if it wasn't agreed upon before

-Dan

[chrisyak]

Thanks for the reply kyle

I use all in one seo currently but would like to try yoast, I will have to put it on my todo list for sure.

404 redirected is a great tool but we have a extensive 404 issue and requires a more investigating to solve the issue than 404 redirected can solve, how ever we will be using that plugin for future issues.

[KyleJack]

Hi Chris,

Wordpress is a terrific platform for making SEO changes even if you're not code savvy. Instead of interfacing with the source code, Wordpress has several plugins that you can install which provide a clean interface for you to edit your material with and make those SEO changes.

For an all-in-one SEO solution in Wordpress I'd highly recommend installing Yoast's SEO plugin. You can change anything from the breadcrumb markup to meta descriptions to XML sitemaps and more within this one plugin.

You mentioned that you have some redirect issues as well. For this I am currently using 404 Redirected. 404 Redirected will alert you about any new problems and allow you to set up and manage your redirects really easily.

I hope that helps,

K