I've always looked at Search Engine Optimization (SEO) like finding a needle in a haystack. A project that would take hours and hours and likely not give me the results that I wanted. Every day (it seems) the search engine companies are changing their algorithm. How could you ever keep up?! Ever feel that way about SEO?
In the last few months, I have been learning more about how I can give my blog an SEO boost. There are many simple things that you can do to help Google and other search engines find you easier.
Today, I'm going to share 10 spots in your WordPress blog that you can look at to beef up your site and make sure you have the highest advantage with SEO.
- Site Title (found in Settings >> General) – Keep it simple, Google will index the first 70 characters
- Title Tag for Site (found in Settings >> General) – Think keywords, but keep it simple.
- Home page meta description (Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress HOME tab) – You have space for 156 characters, but the first 65-70 are indexed
- Title of post or page – Make sure to have your targeted keyword in the title. Google indexes the first 60-70 characters so putting your keywords at the front makes a difference. (Techie side: WordPress will automatically assign a Title and H1 tag based on your title of page or post.
Meta Description – (Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress section in the editor of page or post) this shows in search results for pages – every page should have one specific to the page.Excerpt – (posts only) This shows in search results for posts, social media, the home page, etc. (excerpt section in the editor)
Images – Name the file before you upload it and make sure to optimize it for size. In a future post, I'll share more details on how to do this.
Images – Once you upload, make sure to retype your image name to something easily read by your readers using keywords IN THE TITLE retype from the file name. Eg. stephanie-calahan.jpg becomes Stephanie Calahan.
- Images – Like the image title mentioned in item 8, follow the same steps and fill in the ALT TAG of the image.
Category Names – These are indexed by search engines too! Think keywords and keep them short.
Of course, SEO will remain quite complex. The steps here are the tip of the iceberg. The items mentioned in this post are the initial things to consider. If you really want to dive in, connect with MaAnna Stephenson over at Blog Aid to really get juicy with the right types of WordPress themes and theme setup to make the search engines pull you to the head of the list.
Until we talk again,
Live Fully — Love Openly — Laugh Often — Leverage Your Brilliance — Connect Authentically — Get Your Message Out — Serve with Impact — Prosper Everyday
Vatsala Shukla says
My website designer and programmer never told me about the 10 points that you pointed out in your post and all I knew was that I would have to pay to get SEO content written which was not what I needed – I can write for myself, thanks.
So like many others, I learned as I went along. The Alt Tag is one that I focus on now for SEO and a regular clean up of categories. Thanks for bringing all these points together in one place, Stephanie.
Stephanie LH Calahan says
Good to see you here today. There are a number of spots you can leverage on each post as well. I’ll share those next week.
SEO is a complex topic. When you hire someone to create your site, it’s important to understand their focus. Designers are generally focused on the visual element of a site and programmers/developers are generally focused on writing clean code for your site to have great performance. Both of those things are really important for the success of your site too.
Dynamo Di says
Great post Stephanie! I didn’t realise how much difference SEO made until I learned how to do some for myself. Persevering with learning and applying has resulted in page 1 Google listings for me. Work smarter, not harder! 🙂
Stephanie LH Calahan says
Excellent! If you want, share some of your tips here.
Dynamo Di says
I installed a plugin on my hosted wordpress blog called Squirrly. I had searched for SEO in the plugins as I knew it was something I ought to learn. Squirrly gives you like a crib-sheet at the side of your post as you write, and prompts you to include many of the things you mention above. There are other SEO tools available, I just went with Squirrly as it was one of the first that appeared on the list. I find that I do many of the things automatically as I write now, and when that message “Your article is 100% optimized” pops up, oh what a buzz, and I have certainly seen the difference in rankings and site visitors.
You mention a couple more things, like meta descriptions, which I now need to look at, so thank you for the extra info Stephanie 🙂
Stephanie LH Calahan says
Thanks for sharing. Yoast has similar features for the on-post SEO. (I’ll be writing about that soon.) Thanks for sharing. Glad to hear that over time you have gotten used to making the changes necessary to be found on the net. Hope you come back and share again in the future.
Tai Goodwin says
The Yoast SEO plug-in blog has some great lessons on getting SEO savvy. I use another plug in too – SEOPressor. It has a checklist of what you need to do to optimize your post. It even gives you a warning message if you have “over optimized” with too many key words. The great thing about plugins like this and Squirrly is that after a while you begin to optimize your content automatically.
Stephanie LH Calahan says
Tai – Thanks for chiming in and sharing another plugin that you like. You raise a really important point about not “stuffing” your posts with keywords. At one time that was a preferred method, however, it makes your posts difficult to read and search engines will actually knock you down for doing that now.
Debra Jason says
While Google changes its algorithms all the time, the good old basics remain the same. These 10 points you bring up have long been “tried & true” ways to optimize your Web content (and that includes blogs).
Thanks for the reminders!
🙂
D
Stephanie LH Calahan says
Lovely to see you here today Debra! Having a good system in place where you can do all of these things consistently is a good thing.
Vikki Baptiste says
Great post, Stephanie! May I add an 11th? It all starts with your domain name!
Stephanie LH Calahan says
I love that you brought up that suggestion and 11th item Vikki. I agree with you partially. If you are creating a site for an event, product or program then using your program name with corresponding keywords is a great idea. However, I would not suggest picking a url based on keywords only. Do it only if it matches your branding and long term business plan.