Joost on WordPress SEO

by Jeremy Schoemaker on January 29, 2009 · 48 comments

Joost de Valk, one of Europe’s top SEO’s, gave a talk recently about WordPress SEO at a conference in London:

Nice job Joost!

About the author...

Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2416 posts on ShoeMoney.com.

Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.

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{ 44 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Tushar January 29, 2009 at 6:19 pm

I’ve heard a lot of Joost de Valk.

Will be interested to finally hear him speak.

Thanks!

2 Taris Janitens January 29, 2009 at 11:17 pm

Thats one hell of a name!! I think when I have a kid, I’m going to call him Joost de Valk!!

He will be the badass of the playground I’m telling you!!

3 Joost de Valk January 30, 2009 at 2:38 am

It is a proud name Taris “Valk” is actually Dutch for “falcon”

4 Ben Pei February 3, 2009 at 6:25 am: Wow I thought it was valkryie.. Nonetheless, its damn cool Joost!

Reply

5 Joost de Valk January 30, 2009 at 2:38 am

Hope you were happy with what you saw Tushar

6 Rich January 29, 2009 at 7:24 pm

Silly me I was trying figure out what online video site Joost had to do with SEO…doh

7 Entertainment News January 29, 2009 at 7:25 pm

have just subscribed to his blog, thanks.

8 Writers Needed- Make $200 a Day January 29, 2009 at 8:03 pm

Another short post

9 Jane January 29, 2009 at 8:30 pm

This is great. Ive been waiting to see this. I recommend it to everyone.

10 Aman@BullsBattleBears January 29, 2009 at 8:30 pm

insane video with tonnes of juice! thanks, just got through the first 25mins and getting the plugins as he speaks…again, this is amazing info thus far! anyone that reads this comment, dont skim the video!

11 jtGraphic January 29, 2009 at 9:23 pm

I love this guy. He’s very real. I did a review of sociable on my blog and he left some really great comments.

12 Joost de Valk January 30, 2009 at 2:37 am: Thanks jtGraphic, I appreciate that comment!

Reply

13 reflux January 29, 2009 at 10:10 pm

About 2 months ago….I am focusing on wp web…..from basic front page, very easy abd more seo friendly……great info wp, thanks

14 Manuel January 29, 2009 at 11:02 pm

He is a great resource. His backlink plugin saved me a lot of time.

15 Ari Lestariono January 29, 2009 at 11:08 pm

You still need hard products to sell….

16 Kenney Works From Home January 29, 2009 at 11:23 pm

Thanks…Interesting guy. I am going to try that RSS footer plugin. Some of our niche blogs have been getting scraped a bit.

17 Replica Sunglasses January 30, 2009 at 1:57 am

W P . that’s a great thing for SEO’s….

18 Busby Tester January 30, 2009 at 2:08 am

i have just known about Joost.
maybe because i am newbie

19 Ali Hussain January 30, 2009 at 4:34 am

This was a long video. It took more than 2 hours to download the video

20 chris January 30, 2009 at 5:15 am

Interesting video. SEO is definitely very important for any blog.

21 joe gelb January 30, 2009 at 5:25 am

This guy seems real serious. SEO is where its at.

22 Classifieds January 30, 2009 at 7:47 am

Interesting video, its great to hear his comments on SEO

23 Anthony Shapley January 30, 2009 at 9:27 am

I was at this talk and I can honestly say it was a first class presentation. One of the most benificial for me, throughout the whole a4u expo.

24 Rhea Drysdale January 30, 2009 at 9:38 am

Great to hear Joost discuss his and other’s fantastic plugins. Virtually everything he makes becomes standard for each client’s site I optimize… on that note, I owe him some donations given how much he freely gives back to the community.

25 Rick January 30, 2009 at 1:46 pm

Great video. Very comprehensive… and some great plugin suggestions for new bloggers like myself.

I like what he says about pagerank and leaking. I think people give this topic way too much thought. Just provide quality content and use do-follow on links to other quality blogs with good content.

26 Danelle Ice (Homemaker Barbi) January 30, 2009 at 4:19 pm

This was my first exposure to Joost, and I love his library of plugins; it is very comprehensive.

A couple of points really stuck with me, especially about everything you put on your blog being for your readers. I think many people forget about that when posting and filling up the sidebars with widgets (like he mentioned).

I also loved the point about WP’s structure changing after 2.5.1 with the “older” and “newer” links, and the impact that change had on search ranking for certain keywords. Good info.

Jeremy, thanks for putting up this great video. Joost – thanks for the awesome info. I’ll be tweeting about your site.

Danelle Ice / Homemaker Barbi

27 Darin Carter January 30, 2009 at 4:33 pm

Great Video, Great Information!

28 contentpig January 30, 2009 at 5:10 pm

Joost the man

29 Make Money Online Tips January 30, 2009 at 9:10 pm

Woooooooow 52 mins long. Have been to his blog long time back and has very valuable content. He makes some awesome plugisn too, like the comment redirect one.

30 John January 30, 2009 at 9:10 pm

Great vid. BUT if content is KING why am I getting close ups of a the guys face and MISSING 1/2 the content…duh….

FIRE THE VIDEO GUY

31 ZK@Internet Marketing Blog January 31, 2009 at 9:16 am

So at last we finally saw Joost. He have got great sense of humour as well and I am really impressed with his talking style.

Thanks Shoe for showing us this video.

32 Bill January 31, 2009 at 9:20 am

Thanks for the post of the video.

33 Thomas Howell February 1, 2009 at 4:49 am

Very cool video on Joost. I just downloaded a few of his plugins and putting them to work on my blog network.

34 PopularWealth February 1, 2009 at 5:01 am

Sorry Joost, I have to bust your chops a little bit. I agree with most every technique you talk about, of course I have my own preferences including hardcoding some things instead of using plugins… BUT

You didn’t cover the basics of proper link structure and if you don’t have your “juice flow” plan down cold everythin else you do will have a marginal effect.

An example of a money making blog for example might be 5 heavy hitting money making pages and then a daily post to keep people coming back, ideally in this scenario your index page has 6 links. One to each heavy hitting page and one to an archive which holds “everything else”.

On the other hand if you want EVERYTHING ranking highly you need a much flatter link structure that passes juice deeper + interlinked articles etc.

A+ presentation but I was bothered by the lack of talk about proper link structure which is the FIRST thing someone needs to plan before doing anything else.

35 Goran Website February 2, 2009 at 3:06 am

Wordpress and Google are taking over the world wide web. From blogging to everything else.

36 Richard Mann February 2, 2009 at 2:03 pm

Blogging seems to be gaining in popularity..its another tool in the internet marketers library

37 passive income builder February 4, 2009 at 4:46 am

Alright, gone through the video and gathered a list of plugins and some promotion tips he talked about:

must have SEO plugins:
headspace2 (http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/) – instead of linking text “read more..” it changes the link text to something relevant to post.

redirection (http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/)

yet another related post (http://mitcho.com/code/yarpp/)

SEO Friendly Images (http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/seo-friendly-images) – automagically inserts alt tags for images

rss-footer (Joost de Valk)

meta robot (add no follow/no index to archive pages, privacy, tos, login/register pages)

PROMOTION TIPS:
- get in the conversation of your reader
- you only have one chance at first impression
- do guest posts
- add after “X comments ” “What Do you think?” or something to ask reader to make a comment

38 Wine February 7, 2009 at 6:18 am

Great video – had one point confirmed that I did not action but now will and also learnt one or two new things – thanks for the info – knowledge is power!

39 Stop Dog Barking February 11, 2009 at 9:30 pm