Recently I stumbled across a video featuring Matt Cutts from Google speaking at a WordPress event. So I devoted 45 minutes of my time to watch the video. It was well worth it.
The good news is that Google loves WordPress. Matt outlined that there were surprisingly only a few things one needs to do to search engine optimize WordPress. He recommended five plugins that he thought were essential for WordPress. Scarily I only use two of them. The plugins are:
- Akismet
- Cookies for Comments
- Enforce www.preference
- Feedburner Feedsmith
- WP Super Cache
I should qualify that the plugins he outlined above did not include some other plugins that I also consider essential – such as the All-in-One SEO plugin. However, it depends on your point of view. I noticed Matt uses the Thesis theme – a theme that I use on all but one of my websites (this one!). Thesis is already jam-packed with SEO features so using All-In-One SEO is probably less relevant.
The video is quick and fast paced. You need to pause it a few times to fully understand it and sometimes there are bits about Google Tools that he glosses over that I understand but can’t find in Google Tools. Typical though – I don’t really find many of the Google Tools very intuitive to use. In any case, some of the tools he recommended were:
- Webmaster console at google.com/webmasters
- Google Analytics
- Feedburner – its very quick but he gives a quick tip on the best way to use this
- Google Website Optimizer
- Adsense (some tips on how to use within your site)
It is well worth the watch. Depending on your level of experience some things might go over your head but I wouldn’t worry too much – the video is engaging and the fast pace means you will be moving from one thing to another pretty quickly.
Note: I should point out that the link on this post to the Thesis theme that both Matt Cutts and I use is an affiliate link. If you click on the link and purchase the Thesis theme, I will obtain a commission from the sale. I don’t recommend this product lighheartedly – I use this myself and and only recommend products that I believe are worthy of recommending.
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