SEO is over-analyzed and over-explained. But it really comes down to 1 thing: how well can you connect your website to your audience? The gap between your website and your audience can be difficult to bridge. Fortunately, the best way to connect those two sides is through something that doesn’t require technical knowledge — content marketing.
In this talk, Mark Rogers will walk attendees through everything they need to know to build a content marketing program that grabs attention from search engines. He’ll walk attendees through creating a content strategy, conducting keyword research, writing and optimizing content for SEO, and reviewing success metrics.
Would you like to give a presentation at a future meetup? Let us know! All WordPress-related topics are welcome. We also appreciate talks targeted at any level of WordPresser (beginner, intermediate, and advanced).
JAMstack is growing in popularity as a faster, more secure option than a traditional CMS like WordPress. However, WordPress is still a powerful tool for creating and managing content and can serve as the backend for a modern application. In this session, you’ll learn what JAMstack is, why many consider it the future of the web, and how WordPress fits into a modern web application architecture.
Would you like to give a presentation at a future meetup? Let us know! All WordPress-related topics are welcome. We also appreciate talks targeted at any level of WordPresser (beginner, intermediate, and advanced).
Last fall we held our first mega meetup. We loved the format so much we wanted to have another this year. Due to COVID, however, we had to move our meetups online and make a few adjustments.
See the schedule and sessions below and make sure to RSVP for each session you want to attend on meetup.com.
Can’t make the event? Check out our site after for recordings and slides for all presentations.
Schedule
Track 1 – Existing Site Users
9-10AM — Open Discussion + Q&A
10-11AM — Mark Rogers — Unlocking SEO Through Content Marketing
11AM-12PM — Heather Steele — Your Site Isn’t a Cornfield… Just Because You Build it, Doesn’t Mean They’ll Come
Track 2 – Developers
9AM-12PM — Mike Hale — The Future of WordPress as a Headless CMS
Sessions
(Track 1) Open Discussion & Q&A
To kick off our mega meetup series of events, we’ll start with an open discussion and Q&A. Ask questions, share a success or challenge, meet others in the group or just come to hang out.
(Track 2) The Future of WordPress as a Headless CMS
JAMstack is growing in popularity as a faster, more secure option than a traditional CMS like WordPress. However, WordPress is still a powerful tool for creating and managing content and can serve as the backend for a modern application. In this session, you’ll learn what JAMstack is, why many consider it the future of the web, and how WordPress fits into a modern web application architecture.
(Track 1) Unlocking SEO Through Content Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide
SEO is over-analyzed and over-explained. But it really comes down to 1 thing: how well can you connect your website to your audience? The gap between your website and your audience can be difficult to bridge. Fortunately, the best way to connect those two sides is through something that doesn’t require technical knowledge — content marketing.
In this talk, Mark Rogers will walk attendees through everything they need to know to build a content marketing program that grabs attention from search engines. He’ll walk attendees through creating a content strategy, conducting keyword research, writing and optimizing content for SEO, and reviewing success metrics.
(Track 1) Your Site Isn’t a Cornfield… Just Because You Build it, Doesn’t Mean They’ll Come
Your website is not a cornfield… just because you built it, doesn’t mean they’ll come.
So, you’ve got a website — great! Now it’s time to sit back and watch the business roll in, right?
I mean, that’s how it works in the movie — he builds the baseball field in the middle of nowhere, and like magic, ghostly baseball players show up and cars line up for miles to see them play.
Unfortunately, you won’t have James Earl Jones or cornfield magic on your side.
Join digital marketing bad-ass, Heather Steele of Blue Steele Solutions to learn how to get the right people to your website and move them into your sales funnel once they get there.
Whether your goal is to work on and preview your own website changes or to update and present changes for a client’s website, managing multiple WordPress instances can help your workflow. We’ll discuss the benefits of creating local, staging, and live WordPress environments for your site and how to manage changes across multiple environments. Duncan will discuss workflows for those just getting started up to the full-time professional managing websites for multiple clients.
Duncan is an interactive designer and developer with 10 years of experience working with WordPress as a freelancer and agency professional. He’ll share his experience going from a first-time WordPress tinkerer to a juggler of multiple from-scratch client websites.
Would you like to give a presentation at a future meetup? Let us know! All WordPress-related topics are welcome. We also appreciate talks targeted at any level of WordPresser (beginner, intermediate, and advanced).
Headless WordPress is known to dramatically speed up your site (up to 8 times as fast, if you can believe Netlify!)
It seems as easy as following a Smashing Magazine article, or so Benji Kostenbader, Front-End Developer at Top Hat, thought. But what about ACFs, Yoast, Forms, and Custom Post Types? Follow him on a journey down the rabbit hole of Static Sites and the WordPress REST API!
Benji was so kind as to provide his presentation slides as well. Hope you enjoyed his journey, so you can be on to your nuxt! 😉
Would you like to give a presentation at a future meetup? Let us know! All WordPress-related topics are welcome. We also appreciate talks targeted to any level of WordPresser (beginner, intermediate and advanced).
Setting defaults for search appearance and making sure only the content you want indexed gets indexed
Generating the XML sitemap and checking it carefully
Connecting your site to Google Search Console
Using Yoast to view 404 not found errors
How to use the red light/green light indicators and what how not to use these lights
Special settings for social sharing
How to no-index a page
Other helpful on-page, on-site SEO tips
This meetup presentation was given by Angela Bowman. Angela is a WordPress website custom theme coder and instructor. She specializes in highly customized sites for businesses and nonprofits. She loves the challenge of coding uniquely branded designs for clients and helping them strategize their content organization in WordPress. Angela has been teaching WordPress classes at Boulder Digital Arts since 2009 and started using WordPress in 2007.
Would you like to give a presentation at a future meetup? Let us know! All WordPress-related topics are welcome. We also appreciate talks targeted to any level of WordPresser (beginner, intermediate and advanced).
Security and performance is important for any website. But what about a website with hundreds of thousands of visitors per month and millions of dollars a year on the line?
In this session built for site managers and developers, Top Hat founder Ben Butler will share lessons from managing and building high-traffic WordPress shops to help you effectively scale any WordPress website for the masses.
Would you like to give a presentation at a future meetup? Let us know! All WordPress-related topics are welcome. We also appreciate talks targeted to any level of WordPresser (beginner, intermediate and advanced).
Building an ecommerce can be a daunting experience. Suddenly you’re not just working with content anymore, now it’s taxes and shipping and customers that need to be kept happy.
Fortunately it doesn’t have to be scary.
Join speaker Topher DeRosia to look at a number of steps you can take to remove the uncertainty from building ecommerce websites so that you can move forward with confidence.
Would you like to give a presentation at a future meetup? Let us know! All WordPress-related topics are welcome. We also appreciate talks targeted to any level of WordPresser (beginner, intermediate and advanced).
As a meetup organizer, I love finding speakers to deliver awesome presentations for our group.
Often when I ask someone to present, though, I get feedback like, “Me?” or “I don’t know enough.”
But you (and they) do know enough, already, right now. So let’s talk about eight reasons why you should consider speaking at a meetup.
Everyone knows something! The web is VAST, there are SO many moving parts and change is constant. I guarantee that you know something that someone else doesn’t.
The best way to learn more about a topic is to teach someone else. Preparing your presentation will allow you to deepen your knowledge. (And giving it allows you to learn even more.)
Has anyone in the WordPress space helped you? Have you learned from someone in the community? Consider speaking so that you can pay it forward.
You never know who you’ll inspire by getting up there to speak. You can be a role model (which feels really good).
New speakers make the community vibrant and strong — they’re what keep the community moving forward.
You’ll gain confidence speaking in front of a group. Meetups have the added bonus of being comfortable and laid back, so what better place to speak?
Speaking also allows you to demonstrate authority in your network.
It’s fun! The audience is often really appreciative and engaging. They want to know more, which makes presenting an enjoyable experience.
If you’ve spoken at a meetup before, do you have any other reasons? Share in the comments below!
Would you like to give a presentation at a future WordPress Pittsburgh meetup? Get in touch! All WordPress-related topics are welcome. We appreciate talks targeted to any level of WordPresser (beginner, intermediate and advanced). (Not from the Pittsburgh area? We do virtual meetups, too!)
Join us for our first mega meetup on Saturday, October 19, 2019 from 2PM – 7PM at Code & Supply in East Liberty.
We’re looking for YOU — the DIY WordPresser who wants to learn more and connect with others in the WordPress Pittsburgh community — and we hope you can attend.
This isn’t our normal meetup — we’re jam-packing the evening with TONS of great content and networking opportunities. We’re planning on three speakers, a happiness bar, pizza and lightning talks.
2:15 – 3:00: Lee Drozak, Maintaining Your WordPress Website for Growth and Happiness 3:00 – 3:15: Break 3:15 – 4:00: Miranda Knee, Personalize your WordPress styles by using a child theme 4:00 – 4:15: Break 4:15 – 5:00: Josh Gellock, Going Beyond Basic SEO with WordPress
5:00 – 5:45: Pizza
5:45 – 7:00: Lightning talks
Hacklab
2:15 – 5:00: Happiness bar
Sessions
Lee Drozak, Maintaining your WordPress website for growth and happiness
You have a beautiful site, and it functions great too. Like your home, your site needs love and attention so it doesn’t turn into a fixer-upper or be featured on the WordPress equivalent of HGTV’s Flip or Flop. Maintenance for your WordPress website is more than running updates and scheduling backups. In this session, we’ll talk about creating an easy to follow maintenance plan that factors in growth and usability.
Lee is a WordPress Teacher, Doer, and Fixer at LeeDrozak Biz, founded with tenacity and grit in 2008. She’s what some call a unicorn – designer, developer, and strategist who thinks user-friendliness and planning are where design starts. When she’s not working on WordPress websites, you can find Lee in her RV touring the back roads and countrysides somewhere in the US.
Miranda Knee, Personalize your WordPress styles by using a child theme
You’ve finally found the right theme for your WordPress site. It’s 90% of what you were looking for, but there are a few things missing. Applying a child theme could take your theme from “good enough” to “this is perfect!”
A child theme allows you to make a number of changes to your site’s appearance while still preserving your theme’s original look and functionality. This means you don’t have to worry about theme updates overriding your customizations.
This conversation will cover what a child theme is, when to use it, and why it’s useful. We will also dive into setting up a child theme and how to apply custom styles using CSS.
Miranda is an Interactive Developer at Garrison and Hughes. Although she is new to the GH team she has been working with WordPress for several years and is familiar with creating customized themes. She enjoys coding, problem-solving, debugging, a good podcast, and true crime.
Josh Gellock, Going beyond basic SEO with WordPress
Join Josh Gellock for a talk on deeper SEO tactics that can help your website stand out. In this talk, we’ll cover how to build great content, controlling crawling and indexing, deploying structured data, and improving website performance. We’ll also have a Q&A session, so bring your SEO questions! This is an intermediate talk, perfect for those who already feel comfortable with SEO basics and are looking to level up their efforts.
Josh is the SEO Strategist at Expander Digital, an SEO studio he founded in 2014. He’s been in the SEO space for over seven years and helps businesses drive website traffic from organic search. When he’s not meeting with clients, you can find Josh spending time with his children or on a bike.
