Get to know Horia Neagu, speaker

Posted on by

Hello dear friends 🙂 Today is all about Horia Neagu and his tale of “WordPress & SEO – At Long Last Love“. Let’s get know him a little bit better.

  • When and how did you start working with WordPress?

I discovered WordPress in early 2007, version 2.1, codenamed “Ella”. The world was a very different place back then. A third of internet searches were still made through Yahoo; everyone was either on Hi5 or Myspace, Facebook was a footnote and Twitter was seen as the hipster alternative; if you wanted directions, you went to Mapquest; there were no iPhones and we thought there could be nothing more innovative than having a Nokia phone with a 1.3 megapixel camera and 2 GB of internal storage.
One of the developers I was working with at the time had switched from Joomla to WordPress and was swearing by it. We were working on an SEO project together and we needed a lot of websites for a webring (yes, this was a thing, back in the day). These were very different websites, from blogs to online portfolios and galleries, wikis, one-page lead generation sites and so on. He built all of them with WordPress. That’s when I also discovered how useful WP could be for SEO. I was amazed that such a powerful platform could have such an intuitive UI and produce such a wide array of results. That was the
beginning of a beautiful friendship.

  • Why did you choose this topic for your presentation?

WordPress and SEO are a natural fit. The platform is an SEO’s dream, due to the crisp code, versatility, great use of resources and easy customization. WordPress should be the platform that brings developers, marketers, and clients together, in a symphony of rainbows, candy, and unicorns. However, the exact opposite seems to be true. Clients often fail to grasp the possibilities of the platform, developers miss crucial SEO factors and marketers often hinder the development process, in an attempt to prevent code bloat. It’s a cacophony of misunderstanding, mutual suspicion, and miscommunication.
During the last 11 years of working with WordPress, I have seen a myriad of horrible WP-sites – badly designed, poorly optimized, messy, convoluted, inefficient and yielding a terrible user experience. Sadly, a lot of clients end up losing faith in WordPress after a disastrous project, blaming the platform itself for the failure. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “I want to rebuild my website. I’ll go with any platform, except for WordPress”, I’d be Batman levels of rich.
With my presentation, I’ll be trying to bring all of these elements together. I will be exploring how we can bridge the gap between clients, SEOs and developers. I will be looking at how we can build robust websites that are beautifully coded, provide great value AND help with SEO. I think this is the most powerful combination imaginable. It’s like bringing all of the Infinity Stones together (shout-out to my fellow comic book nerds).

  • What will we learn from your presentation?

If I manage to convey no more than one message with my presentation, I hope I will at least get the point across that there’s no “I” in SEO… all right, there’s also no “we” in SEO, mainly because “sWEo” just wouldn’t sound as catchy. In any case, what I’m trying to say is that SEO is everyone’s playground. It’s collaborative. The SEO guy is there to build a roadmap, offer guidance and support; but good SEO starts and ends with the developers. If some “SEO guru” tells you optimizing a website is his job alone, he’s either Loki in disguise or a clueless idiot. We will be looking at a lot of factors that affect SEO for WP sites, from information architecture, page speed, semantic markup and permalinks to more nuanced issues, such as AMP, code bloat, superhero plugins, villainous plugins that are never to be touched and how a to develop a WP theme that doesn’t
rip a hole in space and time. From theme design and development, to site structure and plugin health checks, I’ll try to cover as much ground as possible, in hopes of getting everyone high on SEO.

  • What do you like to do when you’re not WordPress-ing?

When I’m not WordPress-ing or SEO-ing, I like to spend my time repeatedly pulling on a string tied to a wooden stick, while dressed in a metal vest. I make that sound way weirder than it actually is. To rephrase that, I practice archery and I’m passionate about historical reenactment. I find nothing clears the mind like shooting a bow and pretending you’re a warrior from the 14th century. I also enjoy dabbling in artistic endeavors which usually amount to nothing. I’m a failed writer, comic
book writer, screenwriter, digital illustrator, and musician. I play several instruments, but I’m most proficient (and I use the term loosely) at playing the ocarina. I’m also in love with Arduino, a self-taught script kiddie, digital rights activist and privacy advocate.

  • Few words for the WordPress Bucharest community.

Over a quarter of all Romanian websites are powered by WordPress, so you guys must be doing something right. You deserve a huge round of applause for being such an active and passionate community. Any WP meetup or event is a great experience. Wonderful people, tremendous passion, a ton of fresh and innovative ideas.
Being a WordPress enthusiast is a bit like being both a member and a fan of an awesome band. You’re getting together with like-minded groupies, sharing knowledge and getting inspired, but you’re also creating something that inspires others. And nowhere is this more obvious than in the WP Bucharest community. A huge high-five to all of you! Looking forward to meeting everyone at WordCamp!

Want to get to meet Horia and all the other speakers? Get your ticket now and join us for WordCamp Bucharest.