What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started – SEO Basics, covers the basics of SEO from start to finish, introducing topics such as on-page ranking factors, how search engines work, and link building.

Chapter 2, Optimizing WordPress for SEO, helps align your SEO strategy with the WordPress platform and solidify your plan. You'll need to set realistic goals and timelines for your business or website through educated investigation and analysis. Proper and thorough planning will ensure that you'll succeed even in competitive search markets.

Chapter 3, Researching and Working with Keywords, begins by building a keyword list based on what you have to offer consumers. We'll examine whether it's wiser to focus on a few high-value terms or to build a broader keyword list and rank for a wide variety of phrases. You'll learn how to group the keywords into manageable groups and how to leverage the grouped keywords for maximum SEO benefit.

Chapter 4, Understanding Technical Optimization, covers how to take what you've learned about keyword research and implement a ranking strategy. You'll learn how to build a perfect web page: a web page where all the elements work together to achieve maximum ranking power. You will also learn how to craft a domain name that is well-poised to rank for primary keywords. We will examine how to create an effective WordPress permalink structure.

Chapter 5, Creating Optimized and Engaging Content, shows you how to better engage visitors with your content. You'll learn how to write effective titles and headlines—how to grab readers' attention from the start.

Chapter 6, Link Building, covers some general topics in link building such as how and where to get links. You'll learn about PageRank, Google's trademarked and patented process to count the inbound votes that we receive as links from other websites.

Chapter 7, Using Social Media, shows you how to harness social media in order to promote your company or website and supplement your search strategy.

Chapter 8, Avoiding the Black Hat Techniques, takes you on a tour through the seedy side of SEOs. We'll examine a wide range of black and gray hat techniques—and why it is imperative that you avoid them.

Chapter 9, Avoiding SEO Mistakes, examines the errors in keyword research that can lead to ranking trouble in the future. We will look at the complex challenges surrounding site architecture and some common mistakes that webmasters make.

Chapter 10, Testing Your Site and Monitoring Your Progress, covers a range of tools with which you can monitor the quality of your website, learn how search spiders interact with your site, measure your rankings in search engines for various keywords, and analyze how your visitors behave when they are on your site.

Appendix A, WordPress SEO Plugins, discusses some of the most helpful and powerful plugins that can help you take your WordPress site to the next level.

Appendix B, Other SEO Resources, provides you with some resources that can help you stay on top of search engine optimization for your website.