40 WordPress Optimisation tips

by Joost de Valk on 29 April, 2009 at 11:45 147 comments

I presented on A4UExpo Europe yesterday on WordPress Optimisation, doing 40 tips in 40 minutes. Here are the slides:

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Tags: A4UExpo, WordPress Plugins, WordPress SEO
Category: WordPress
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147 Responses to “40 WordPress Optimisation tips”

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by Agent SEO on 29 April, 2009 at 14:05

Great list Yoast. There are some really great technical suggestions here. I agree with the part about abandoning Digg, as I've tried to form a small strategy around it and it hasn't really yielded any results!

by snoman on 1 November, 2009 at 15:23

yes, Digg seems not useful in the short term & I wouldn't waste time on a campaign through it, but its a good "set it and forget it" addition that can add a little to the long tail - we'll stick it on the sno blog http://www.sno.travel/blog but not push it particularly

we have implemented the vast majority of your suggestions and snoman's sno blog and Grand Alpine Tour are starting to get really great numbers... what we really need is a full design by your firm, but the SEO set up is half way there...

by mark harrison on 29 April, 2009 at 14:55

I've only just discovered your blog and I am so pleased I have and without doubt,the best thing I have discovered this year. Your WordPress articles are truly fantastic so thank you and I look forward to reading you more now that you are in my reader.

by Obrázky na lidé on 29 April, 2009 at 17:40

Quite useful list Yoast! Thanks.

by wie bali on 8 May, 2009 at 04:10

thanks thats smart tips

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by Alison Moore Smith on 29 April, 2009 at 20:39

Helpful and depressing. I didn't really need more to do this week! :)

by raiderhost on 30 April, 2009 at 04:16

thankz for tips, its the great tips to optimal my blog.

by Samuel Folkes on 30 April, 2009 at 05:08

Hmmm, this was a pretty informative list. Thanks Yoast. Getting on it right away.

LOL @ Allison Moore Smith. I share your sentiments...

by Jon Buscall on 30 April, 2009 at 11:11

Joost,
Thanks for sharing such a great bunch of slides. I really appreciate it. Just going through it for a second time.

by PimpMyWordPress on 30 April, 2009 at 14:04

Great tips. Thanks a lot for sharing.

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by just Guido on 30 April, 2009 at 21:47

Cheers for putting this online so fast.

Missed out on the code bits that you need to add to prevent indexing of some of the stuff... yeah... thanks! ;-)

by Francis Collis on 30 April, 2009 at 22:08

Thank you very much Yoast for sharing these great tips with us!

by Alex Vermeule on 1 May, 2009 at 08:33

Hi Joost, would you always enable WP Super Cache? (tip#1). Or just when you're experiencing a traffic spike?

Thanks for all the great content on WordPress btw!

by Ramoonus on 4 May, 2009 at 15:05

I`ve got WP Super Cache always enabled ...

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by Julian on 1 May, 2009 at 10:38

Hi Joost,

Thank you a lot for that session! I'm trying out now what your landing page for comments is :-)

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by Michael on 1 May, 2009 at 19:52

Very cool post... the tips are great.

I tried to follow the slide on "Remove Unecessary Meta Info"

I added the code to my Theme's function php, but it doesn't seem to remove the info... do I need to add something to the code?

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by Pikesan on 2 May, 2009 at 00:24

Wrote down 15 action items from your presentation after watching it 3 times. And I thought my blog was pretty tight! Very helpful!

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by Hamilton on 2 May, 2009 at 14:43

Great tips, I'm testing all of them. Thank you!

by Decky Rooroh on 3 May, 2009 at 00:09

It would be nice if you share that presentation without slideshare account ?
Because, I think many your reader don't have it.

by Happy Hotelier on 3 May, 2009 at 14:31

Thanks!

Never too old to learn.

Question: The 404 notifier plugin page says only compatible up to WP 2.5?? Usable beyond WP 2.5?

by Kevin Alvarez on 3 May, 2009 at 16:36

Joost,

Thanks for taking the time to post the tips. Some of them were new to me. I think Tip #41 also is a valuable lesson. People need to remember to include a call to action in their presentations and blog posts.

by Brian Bentzen on 3 May, 2009 at 16:39

Good stuff. Just twittered it:-)

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by Sue on 5 May, 2009 at 08:48

Well, at least I am doing a few things right. Now to work on the rest. Thanks for giving me the clues on where to start.

by IlmondodeiSitiWeb on 5 May, 2009 at 09:47

great report!
the tips inside are classic, but remember it is a good thing!

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by Blogging for business on 6 May, 2009 at 05:24

Great article. Just emailed the presentation to a friend. Working my way through the list. Thanks a bunch.

Michael

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by znafis on 7 May, 2009 at 01:42

Thanks. I'll try it

by Stijn on 7 May, 2009 at 10:21

Thanks for sharing. I read through the entire thing and have downloaded the following plugins: wp-greetbox, wp-pagenavi, debug queries, wp-refere, and 404 notifier. Most of the other ones I knew of before. Only some seemed less interesting.

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by Rizwan on 8 May, 2009 at 16:57

Interesting tips, but you said in Section #2 tip 14 Disable Paged Comments do you think its a good idea when we have 4000+ comments on a post? Should we display that 4000 comments on one page. If you have better idea please tell me Thanks.

by James Callahan on 9 May, 2009 at 02:27

thank you Yoast. A very impressive list. I started applying many of those tips on my own blog already.

by Trri Setiyo on 9 May, 2009 at 04:23

Thx. Great info. I will use it to my blog

by Karl Foxley on 9 May, 2009 at 14:33

I really like your site, your plugins and the information you share. You always share top quality info that others wouldn't give away to their closest friends. :)

Thanks again,

Karl

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by Blog design Lab on 10 May, 2009 at 18:24

Very interresting & usefull. I realise, that wordpress is not so good just out of box !

by Toddler activities on 11 May, 2009 at 12:03

interesting 40 tips, thanks a lot

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by Webdev on 11 May, 2009 at 15:37

Hi, most of the tips are great! Thank you! However, for me Digg just works better than StumbleUpon for example.

by gadget on 11 May, 2009 at 16:22

As always, great info but now I've got a load of research to do to understand what you've said - lol.

by Catzie on 11 May, 2009 at 17:57

I learned a lot from that. :D Thanks.

by Roy on 11 May, 2009 at 22:00

Phwoarr.....! It all makes sense and I just know it has to be done, but what a lot of work, not to mention a learning curve for me. I think your final slide is probably the most important of them all. ;-)

by zuliady azwin on 12 May, 2009 at 09:54

Hm, nice information dude, i will use this tips in my blog site ;)

Thank you,

by Website Design on 12 May, 2009 at 10:41

Man you have done a lot of research hats off to you! Thanks for sharing such great SEO information

by kate james on 12 May, 2009 at 10:47

yeah very useful and informative tips .. AWESOME
Thanks for such great help...

by music videos on 12 May, 2009 at 15:09

This was a pretty informative list. Thanks...

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by Frank J on 14 May, 2009 at 00:36

Many of these are well known. I always instruct my blog friends to remove php calls that should be static. It makes a small difference in server and page loads if you're on a dedicated server that's hosting only your blog. On shared hosts it does make a big difference and can reduce the cpu utilization.

by DONNNNNNNNNN on 14 May, 2009 at 13:43

40 WordPress Optimisation-interesting 40 tips, thanks a lot..... good
http://www.allofmp3tunes.com/Search/?q=word

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by Wesley Plugers on 15 May, 2009 at 16:47

Thanks Joost. Cool post!

by Craig Dickson on 15 May, 2009 at 17:57

Is there no sound for this presentation? I thought it was my system, but I tried it on a couple of browsers and OSes and doesn't seem to be any. Too bad. I would like to have heard the thinking behind some of the tips.

by Ant on 16 May, 2009 at 03:17

Great, great tips! One of the better lists on wordpress optimization I've seen so far.

by Wedding Dresses Liverpool on 16 May, 2009 at 11:46

I use a wordpress blog for my bricks & mortar business site and there's some tips in that list that sould even help me. Thank you

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by Jaroslaw Dobrzanski on 16 May, 2009 at 15:35

Nice bunch of tips. Some of them were obvious but several were kind of new for me. Top work!

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by Guennadi M on 19 May, 2009 at 03:25

Thank you for sharing this with us. I just started blogging and this comes at a very good time. Thank you.

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by elQuique on 21 May, 2009 at 02:03

Great tips and good job, very usefull thanks Yoast !!

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by Francis Collis on 21 May, 2009 at 17:36

Very usefull! Thank you very much for sharing!

by Ener Hax on 21 May, 2009 at 20:39

great tips, nicely presented, and inspiring *starts now . . . 40 minutes to go*

by Jesse on 22 May, 2009 at 19:03

Short sweet and effective thanks for this.

by Robin Lee on 23 May, 2009 at 07:28

Thanks Yoast for such useful tips!

by Webmaster Tools on 24 May, 2009 at 12:19

Great List , I love to apply all these to my personal and business blog

by Get Real on 25 May, 2009 at 05:07

Of course he deleted my comment - what a fraud! There is nothing in this post (or on this whole site) that has any real information aside from him pushing his own apps. So here is a real comment from a real person and he will delete it - only leaves up the fake comments.

by Craig S. Dickson on 25 May, 2009 at 05:44

In response to "Mr. Get Real".

Perhaps you are correct sir.

But then again, at least Mr. Yoast has the courage to put his face and name out there in a public forum and puts forward ideas and opinions that are then vulnerable to petty criticism by callow individuals who don't have enough self respect to even bother to use their real names.

I have read both of your comments on this thread and neither have added any value to the conversation. If you truly believe Mr. Yoast is incorrect, then why do you not offer up some concrete alternative ideas?

Unless you are prepared to offer up something of value, then your comments are just a waste of page space and bandwidth and deserve to be deleted to conserve everyone's time and resources.

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by MattCutts on 26 May, 2009 at 01:38

Good stuff! I enjoyed lots of these tips.

by John Deere on 26 May, 2009 at 12:43

Thank you for good and cognitive video. Really usefull.

by Peter on 27 May, 2009 at 11:23

Hi Yoast, thanks for all these tips, it's a blessing locating your blog today. Sure i have bookmarked it to visit as often as possible and access more information, keep up the good work. Givers never lack, you will prosper the more.

by Staci on 27 May, 2009 at 21:55

Your tips and your site in general continue to be an invaluable resource! THANKS!

by Musa on 28 May, 2009 at 07:49

Its a great post which not only useful for wordpress blog, for other web sites(cms, e-com) as well.

Good Job!

by Phil v. Sassen on 30 May, 2009 at 21:24

Great work!

You helped me a lot. Hope that Google respects the changes ...

Cheers, Phil

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by Brandon C. on 3 June, 2009 at 17:16

"Seek and ye shall find" - I have been looking for detailed information to help me
in making good sound SEO adjustments to my site. Joost, thank you for all of the hard work you do!

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by Shamen on 4 June, 2009 at 16:44

Thanks the the great tips!

by Sajid Latif on 5 June, 2009 at 07:06

this was a pretty informative list. Thanks Yoast.

by Travis on 6 June, 2009 at 06:54

I heard your interview at WebMasterRadio and had to hear more on WordPress SEO.

Maybe with time you'll see more worthy-competition, the WordPress community gets bigger everyday with insight like this.

Thanks so much!

by Wendy Mason on 11 June, 2009 at 09:26

Great suff - I'm realising I have a lot to learn from people like you!

by alex on 12 June, 2009 at 09:54

tried some of the methods on my blog (it's about shipping), and it did speed up the site by a second or two.. so thank you! :)

by Jeroen on 22 June, 2009 at 12:15

Thanks for your tips, they are very useful for developing some new wordpress sites!

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by AYOSINI.COM | stop dreaming start action on 2 July, 2009 at 02:30

This was a pretty informative list. Thanks...

by V.C on 2 July, 2009 at 05:08

Could you show us how to move .htacess to sever config? And disable .htacess parsing?

by Widewebway on 10 July, 2009 at 08:15

Really 40 great tips!! Many Many thanks :)

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by Tom Anders on 21 August, 2009 at 11:39

Thanks for the lists guys...great help.

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by Falko on 11 September, 2009 at 19:14

Perfect work!

Thanks for help in some points.

Greetz, Falko

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by snoman on 16 September, 2009 at 20:40

incredible list but you really should offer it as a "package" WordPress install - this is just the level of SEO effort I'd like to see on the blog for our ski holiday site http://www.sno.mobi - how much in Joost-time do you think all of the setup for this list would be on a new WP blog?

drop me a line if you're interested in doing a "super setup" for us

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