Interview with a WordPress Guru
Morten Rand-Hendriksen of Pink and Yellow Media is an author with lynda.com where he teaches several courses on WordPress. That’s where I first met him.
When I found his Vancouver WordPress Group on Meetup.com, I attended several of his meetups, most recently a Rountable discussion in August. Morten is also an organizer of the upcoming WordCamp in October.
I caught up with him on Google Chat – which he had to coach me how to use – and we talked about SEO and WordCamp, among other things.
Morten, at the August roundtable you said a few things that surprised, er shocked me: You said, “SEO is bullshit.” Why?
Why? Because I like to be controversial and I like to put things on the edge.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of setting up a site and its content in such a way that search engines are more likely to rank the site higher. Historically, that made a lot of sense: Search engines used simple algorithms to rank sites, usually based on keywords and hits, and that system was easy to game. But that’s not the case any more.
Google abandoned keywords all together several years ago because people were gaming the system. Today, search ranking relies on a host of other factors including how often content is shared and by whom, how trustworthy the source is, how the long-tail searches match the actual content and whether the post answers a question, etc.
The reason I say “SEO is bullshit” is because when people sell SEO as a service they usually mean the old way of doing things. Gaming the system today is not only incredibly hard, but if you get caught the search engines penalize you severely for cheating.
Today, if you want to be shared and found on the web, you need one thing and one thing only: great content. Studies have shown even awfully coded websites that break every standard get great ranking if the content is stellar and people share it.
Meta keywords are pointless. Keywords – or more precisely key phrases – in the body of a post or page are extremely effective because they are in the content. Tags on the other hand are great because they provide internal linking of content and give search engines a road map of the site. Same with categories.
That’s why I try to add “Related content” links to all sites I build. It gives search engines and visitors a way of diving deeper into the site.
Of course, this is all super controversial and there are tons of people who hate me for saying it.
But, to get the most exposure possible for your site you need to focus more on shareability than searchability, because your shareability automatically increases your searchability.
What tools do you recommend to get more shareability?
For WordPress sites you should use the WordPress SEO plugin made by Yoast.
When people share your URL you want the people who see the share to see a great eye catching title they want to click on and a short description that sums up the article in two lines of text. But instead of thinking about it as a search engine title and description, think of it as a Facebook sharing title and description. Whatever you put in those fields is what shows up when people share the link on Facebook and Google+. WordPress SEO from Yoast gives you a preview of what that will look like right when you type it in and it allows you to connect your site directly with your Facebook Page and even generates Google XML sitemaps for you so it does a lot of stuff at once.
In addition you should have a featured image on every page and post, even if your theme doesn’t display them. The featured image becomes the image displayed when the page or post is shared on Facebook and Google+.
As a bonus, the title and description also shows up when people find you on Google and Bing. So instead of thinking “Search Engine Optimization”, think “Optimization for Share”
Tell me about the upcoming WordCamp. Having never been, what can people expect?
WordCamp is awesome and I’m not just saying that because I’m an organizer.
You get to meet other people who work with WordPress on all levels, there are always great talks that show you how to do things and how far you can push the application, and you get to interact with people who are in the same boat as you.
I find that the best thing at these events is to just sit down with random people and talk to them about what they do. Every person has a different story to tell and a new tidbit of information you didn’t know.
And I strongly encourage new users to attend. I know it may seem intimidating and a lot of new users will think they are not ready for it, but trust me. If you are just starting out with WordPress, going to WordCamp will be the best decision you can make.
Stay tuned to the WordCamp website for more information in the coming weeks.
I’ll be there! Thanks for your time.
Vancouver WordCamp is scheduled for October 13 at BCIT in Burnaby.
Morten’s blog is at designisphilosophy.com, his twitter is @mor10 and Facebook facebook.com/pinkandyellowmedia. The Vancouver WordPress Meetup Group page is at facebook.com/wpyvr. Bloggers can get 7 days of free access to Morten on Lynda.com by following this link: lynda.com/trial/mor10