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
-
PPC ads: landing page vs website page ... other metrics to consider?
I run 3 PPC ads in Chinese language on Baidu, of which one landing page consistently ranks around 5th amongst 80+ other English website pages. So, when our site was recently developed for Chinese language, I redirected the ads to the relevant Chinese website pages for a month to see which would attract more visitors (Chinese landing pages vs Chinese website). I haven't fully analysed the results yet, but what other metrics should I consider than just the volume of visitors? Landing page
Reporting & Analytics | | SteveMauldin
https://www.mogas.com/en-us/ppc-ads/mogas-球阀
https://www.mogas.com/en-us/ball-valves (in English) Website page
https://www.mogas.com/zh-cn/产品
https://www.mogas.com/en-us/products (in English)0 -
How do sites without access to a site's analytical data, determine a site's organic traffic?
I've recently used a organic traffic checker that showed you your traffic compared to each google algo update. I was interested in how they derived the organic traffic totals for each month, without having access to our site's google analytics? I've since compared the data to historical google analytics data and it's not wrong, isn't 100% match either but isn't far from fact. So if they're predicting or making a guess, it's rather spot on, site crawlers and SERPs snapshots only provide so much info, I'm just wondering where they get the rest from and how?
Reporting & Analytics | | Deacyde0 -
Campaign Tracking URLs and the Impact on SEO
Hi Guys, I am setting up tracking for a couple of offline campaigns in Analytics and would just like to know if this will cause issues. The situation is below: Two URLs Ranking Well Organically: www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-b URLs Setup for the Purpose of Offline Campaigns www.domain.co.uk/campaign1 www.domain.co.uk/campaign2 Plan to Track this in Analytics www.domain.co.uk/campaign1 redirecting to www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a_&utm_medium=qr&utm_source=test1&utm_campaign=test1_ www.domain.co.uk/campaign2 redirecting to www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a&utm_medium=qr&utm_source=test2&utm_campaign=test1__ So the idea is that the user gets a nice simple URL to input from the off-line media (www.domain.co.uk/campaign1). This then redirects to one of the pages thats performing well organically (www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a) but with the relevant tracking (www.domain.co.uk/campaign1 redirecting to www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a&utm_medium=qr&utm_source=test1&utm_campaign=test1). The only way that the tracking URL can be accessed by the user is if the off-line media URL is entered. My main concern here is how Google will treat this. Obviously I don't want to cause issues with the two URLs that are ranking well organically. Would having a version of exactly the same URL, just with tracking do so? Any help is appreciated! Thanks in advance.
Reporting & Analytics | | CarlWint0 -
Behavior Flow vs. All Pages report in Google Analytics
In the interest of determining why our ecommerce site isn't converting, I've been spending some quality time with GA. I've suspected that our front page is part of the problem, especially where our organic traffic is concerned (we get a good deal of referral traffic from a link on an OEM's site). According to the Behavior Flow report under the Behavior section of GA, organic traffic to our home page is hemorrhaging (roughly 60% bounce rate). But when I went to the All Pages report (Behavior > Site Content > All Pages) and looked at organic traffic to our home page, then looked at the Medium as a secondary dimension, I'm getting a bounce rate of 35%. Why the massive discrepancy? Can somebody assist?
Reporting & Analytics | | ufmedia0 -
Google Analytics VS target="_blank" internal links: How much wrong is it?
I am working on an e-commerce website, and our CEO is sure that having target="_blank" in internal search result is boosting the conversion (not sure, but it's not an issue at the moment). The problem is that Google Analytics sees all URLs visited from search results as entrances/direct visits, hence the Booking Funnel Tracking does not work as it was supposed to. Is there any way to recover the tracking? Or we shall get the rid of target="_blank" attribute?
Reporting & Analytics | | apartmentGin0 -
Bing Won't Index Site - Help!
For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to figure out why my client's site is not indexed on bing and yahoo search engines. My Google analytics is telling me I’m getting traffic (very little traffic) from Bing almost daily but Bing webmaster tools is telling me I’ve received no traffic and no pages have been indexed into Bing since the beginning of December. At once point I was showing ranking in Bing for only one keyword then all of a sudden none of my pages were being indexed and I now rank for nothing for that website. From Google I’m getting over 1200 visits per month. I have been doing everything I can to possibly find the culprit behind this issue. I feel like the issue could be a redirect problem. In webmaster tools on Bing I’ve used “Fetch as Bingbot” and every time I use it I get a Status of “Redirection limit reached.”. I also checked the CRAWL Information and it’s saying all the URL’s to the site are under 301 redirect. A month or so ago the site was completely revamped and the canonical URL was changed from non www to www. I have tried manually adding pages to be indexed multiple times and Bing will not index any of the sites pages. I have submitted the sitemap to Bing and I am now at a loss. I don’t know what’s going on and why I can’t get the site listed on Bing. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,
Reporting & Analytics | | VITALBGS
Stephen0 -
Yahoo Site explorer: Different results for www & non-www domain. Can we merge these?
When checking our domain on yahoo site explorer, different results are shown for www.theprintspace.de and theprintspace.de. We have done a 301 redirect, as we want to optimise our www.theprintspace.de domain. However, we have a lot more backlinks for theprintspace.de. Is there any way of merging the two, so we don't loose all the linkjuice we get for theprintspace.de and use those links to optimise www.theprintspace.de? Thanks for your help!
Reporting & Analytics | | Waplington0 -
What is the best Wordpress Analytics Plugin to use?
I am installing a new instance of WordPress and want to use Google Analytics. Which Plug-in is the best to use? I am finding several Plug-ins that all seem to do the same thing: Google Analyticator Google Analytics Dashboard Simple Google Analytics Ultimate Google Analytics Wordpress Google Analytics Maybe one of these are not the best? Any recommendations would be appreciated. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | LBike0