Joost's Wordpress Affiliate Session @ LAC 2010
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WordPress Optimisation 40 tips, in 40 minutes, and then some questions!
Transcript of Joost's Wordpress Affiliate Session @ LAC 2010
WordPress Optimisation
40 tips, in 40 minutes, and then some questions!
Open SourceApple
CSS SEO
Geek
TheologyAffiliate
BloggerSpeaker
Marketer
Online marketer
WordPress
Section #1: Speed!
Tip Section #1: Speed
Install W3 Total CachePreferrably with APC / Memcached for database caching
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Tip Section #1: Speed02
Combine CSS files into one big CSS file and then minify
Same goes for JavaScript, most of which should be loaded in the footer.
(W3 Total Cache can help with that)
Tip Section #1: Speed03
Kill some plugins...
And try to replace them for custom code or similar ones. Some plugins are god awful.
Tip Section #1: Speed04
Offload as much as you canImages to a CDN
Javascript to a CDN or to Google:http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/
Tip Section #1: Speed05
Use CSS sprites
have a look at spriteme.org
Tip Section #1: Speed06
Clean up those sidebars.
Do you really need all those badges? Even more important: do your visitors need them?
Tip Section #1: Speed
Still slow? Switch to better hosting.
http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-hosting/
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Section #2: SEO
Tip Section #2: SEO
Set Pretty Permalinks
And yes remove post id, date and other nonsense.
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Tip Section #2: SEO
Cloak your f*ing affiliate links.
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Tip Section #2: SEO
Give Robots directions
Noindex wp-admin, login and register pages etc.using the WordPress SEO plugin:http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
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Tip Section #2: SEO
Write better titles
Use WordPress SEO
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Tip Section #2: SEO
Write good meta descriptions
If you don’t, do NOT auto generate them. (Unless of course you’ve got an awesome description template)
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Tip Section #2: SEO
Create proper pagination
Using wp-pagenavi by Lester Chan, f/i.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pagenavi/
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Tip Section #2: SEO
Disable paged comments
They suck.
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Tip Section #2: SEO
Add value:Use custom taxonomies and
custom post typesCustom Post Type UI
Ultimate Post Type ManagerUltimate Taxonomy Manager
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Section #3: Maintenance
Backup your database every few hours
Using f.i. Lester Chans WP-DBManager pluginor any of the other plugins out there
16 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Add this line to your wp-config:define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true);
To auto repair your database when needed
17 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Backup your files every day
Use WordPress Backup:www.blogtrafficexchange.com/wordpress-backup
18 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Check your queries
Use the Debug Queries plugin to check for plugins gone mad
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/debug-queries/
19 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Run Akismet
Kill those spam comments.
20 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Check the referrers for comments
http://tools.davidnaylor.co.uk/
21 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Make sure your scraper scripts don’t get fed spam
22 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Track your uptime
Use Pingdom, or another tool,but be the first to know when your site is down.
23 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Check 404’s
Use the 404 notifier:wordpress.org/extend/plugins/404-notifier/
and fix them using Redirection
24 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Remove unneccesary meta info
// Remove Really simple discovery linkremove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link');// Remove Windows Live Writer linkremove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link');// Remove the version numberremove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');
25 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
(or you could just use my WordPress SEO plugin)
Section #4: Social
Allow & encourage people toshare
your content
26 Tip Section #4: Social
Use those Twitter Tweet & Facebook Like buttons
Doing newsletters?
Add a refer a friend button on the thank you page!
27 Tip Section #4: Social
Or... Use my Comment Redirect plugin, and add the refer a friend there!
28 Tip Section #4: Social
Make sure your comments are gravatar enabled.
29 Tip Section #4: Social
Buy me a beer later,Grolsch, or Heineken :)
and yes I know it’s only just noon or so, who cares?
30 Tip Section #4: Social
Section #5: Analytics
Use Google Analytics and my plugin for it
(or if you wear a tinfoil hat or you’re German, use Clicky & my plugin)
32 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use an RSS footer
(do I need to mention my WordPress SEO plugin again? ;) )
33 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use RSS link tagging
it’s in my Google Analytics plugin or userebelic.nl/rsslinktagger
(getclicky will understand GA Campaign tagging too)
33 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Track traffic coming from Twitter:yoast.com/twitter-analytics/
34 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use hash tag based campaign tracking:#utm_campaign etc.
35 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use comment redirect to track first time commenters
36 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Track comments as a goal!
37 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use an onclick javascript with a minor delay.
Track RSS subscribers the same way
38 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Start optimizing:which traffic leads to more subscribers / proper click outs?
39 Tip Section #5: Analytics
And yes that means forgetting about Digg.
Use my blog metrics plugin
40 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Improve yourself each month!
Conference / Party in Amsterdam10 speakers15 attendees
http://seoroyale.com/
Speakers include:
Bob RainsMarcus TandlerFrank WatsonDennis Goedegebuure (Direct of SEO @ eBay)
