Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is important, but let’s take a look at why it is only part of what you should be doing. SEO takes a long time to do and get results from, this is not something you are going to do and see results right away. You need to do it, here are a few things to check off your list.
Set up Google Webmaster Tools
If you don’t have it set up, stop reading click this link and set it up. Ok assuming you now have it set up, let’s move on. If you are using a SEO plugin you will want to add your Goole Webmaster tools id to your plugin admin page where applicable.
Set up Google Analytics
If you don’t already have it set up, there is no time like the present. Google Analytics Set it up to go back as far as you can, you can look at the traffic and make sure it is not showing any red flags, anything that stands out as a problem. Any spikes or cliffs are something you want to look at further.
Check the Google Index
This might be a no-brainer to some of you, but it is something that needs to be done. You can do this by using the “site” operator in a google search “site:domain.com” replace the “domain” with your own. If you have thousands of pages and you should have 20, you have a problem. You only want pages in the index that will further your business, don’t compete with yourself for search results. Maybe you have none shown, that is a different problem. we will cover this more later.
This might be a no-brainer to some of you, but it is something that needs to be done. You can do this by using the “site” operator in a google search “site:domain.com” replace the “domain” with your own. If you have thousands of pages and you should have 20, you have a problem. You only want pages in the index that will further your business, don’t compete with yourself for search results. Maybe you have none shown, that is a different problem. we will cover this more later.
MOZ has a great free tool to check the links to your site. You want to make sure the sites that are linking to your site are decent links, and not malware type sites. You can disavow links from your google webmaster tools account but make sure you know which links are causing the problem so you do not disavow good links.
Check your Robots TXT file
If you need a good resource you can check out robotstxt.org they have some great information on the subject. robots.txt file is where you can advise robots or crawlers to not include certain pages in the crawl, that said they can choose to listen to you or not, most do, but it is really an option, not a given that they will listen. Making sure you have the correct code in your Robots.txt or you could possibly be blocking all search engines. In WordPress, there is a tick box in the settings that writes to the telling robots not to crawl the site, this is worth looking at as well.
If you need a good resource you can check out robotstxt.org they have some great information on the subject. robots.txt file is where you can advise robots or crawlers to not include certain pages in the crawl, that said they can choose to listen to you or not, most do, but it is really an option, not a given that they will listen. Making sure you have the correct code in your Robots.txt or you could possibly be blocking all search engines. In WordPress, there is a tick box in the settings that writes to the telling robots not to crawl the site, this is worth looking at as well.
There are several great plugins out there for this Yoast and All in one SEO are both great plugins we have used before. there is a lot of documentation out there to help you set them up.
Check your Permalinks
In your settings menu, you will find a link to the permalinks. this is the URL setting, you want to make them “Pretty Permalinks” check the post name and hit save. You should do this as soon as you set up the site, otherwise, you might break some links.
Use a Social Sharing Plugin
There are a bunch of them out there, I really don’t have a preference. In the WordPress Repository, you can choose from a list the one that best suits your situation. The important thing is you are using one, social sharing is important to your SEO.
Focus on the “On Page”
On Page SEO is something that you have total control over, this is a great place to start. If you are building a site think about your SEO in the build, if not then you will need to go through some of these steps to make sure that you cover the basics.
- Title Tags (Page Titles)
- Header Tags (H1, H2, etc)
- Internal Links (Use keyword-rich text links to similar content)
- URL Structure (Use your keywords in your article title)
- Load Speed (Use Google Insights, GTmetrics, or similar services to test load speed)
These are things that will give you a great start to your SEO Journey!
