Is your WordPress website optimized for search engines? Every small business website needs to be found on search engines in favorable positions and in this article I’ll show you how you can improve your chances of being positioned higher than the competition. There’s a lot of misinformation and myths about how to get ranked on search engines such as Google. Many businesses don’t know where to start, other than just hiring an SEO person to do the work for them. Whether you hire someone or not, it’s good to know the basics involved. Having a WordPress website makes it even easier because there are tools that you can use right away. So let’s get started.
Here’s the video version:
Step #1: Decide on the keywords
The first thing you need to do to optimize WordPress website is decide on the keywords. What do you want to rank for? This question may sound simple but it has huge consequences for your website. You need to decide on keywords to use, keeping in mind the fact that other businesses are competing for the same keywords. The other thing to keep in mind is the size of area that you’d like to reach and add that to your keyword. If you are a dentist in Oklahoma City, then your keyword should include this location so that search engines can rank you within that location. Lastly, come up with a list of keywords which you’ll use in the next step.
Step #2: Revise page content
Now that you have the list of keywords from step #1, lets integrate that into the website. The first thing you need to do is head on to Settings -> General Settings on your WordPress admin, and change the Site Title and Tagline of the website to fit the general keyword that explains your site, as shown below.
Next, starting with the homepage, ask yourself what keyword fits the description of that page and rewrite the content of that page, using the chosen keyword in various forms. For example, if your keyword in “dentist Oklahoma City”, you can use it as “Oklahoma City dentist” as well as “experienced Oklahoma City dentist” so that when potential users are searching any of these variations you’ll be found. Each page you want to rank for needs enough content for it to be viewed as useful resource by search engines. Try to have at least 500 words to be on the safe side. It’s also important to link to other pages within your site which provide more information.
Step #3: Download Yoast SEO Plugin
The last step to optimizing WordPress for search engines is to use Yoast SEO plugin. Once you have the pages written up with the right amount of content and matching keywords, the next thing to do is download the Yoast SEO plugin. This plugin will allow us to one one very important thing: add page-level meta descriptions. What are meta descriptions, you ask? When you search on Google, this is the information below the website links that gives you a description of the page/website. It’d be sad to appear on search results and not have a compelling description to get users into your site.
With the plugin downloaded and installed on your website, go back to the pages and below the page editor, you’ll see a section for Yoast SEO. Rewrite the page title and description mixing in the keyword for that page.
Bonus Step #4: Improve Site Speed
The loading speed of your site has become super important to better search ranking. The faster your site loads the better it’ll be ranked because it’s optimized as a resource for search users. I made a video detailing this topic on how to improve site speed which you can check out here: .
That’s it for today. It’s now your turn to take action. Please feel free to contact us if you need help getting your site to rank or other WordPress website needs. Checkout all the ways to contact us on our contact page.
Peace.
