Basic WordPress SEO

Search Engine Optimisation Is A Skill Developed Over Years

All we can do for you as a novice is let you have the basic to use to at least meet the basic requirements to get your site recognised by Google and the others.

Out of the box WordPress has some SEO characteristics but not a lot and unless you improve it you will be exactly the same as millions of other sites that have done absolutely nothing and therefore whose sites stand zero chance of ever being ranked and in many cases even found.

If you are running a business there is no way you will attract customers if you are at the very worst not on the top of page 2. The top 3 sites on Page 1 of Google take 75% of all visitors.

Following the procedures here are not likely to get you to page one unless you have something unique in your business you can use as a keyword.

I did work with a specialist sunshade company once who was the only supplier of commercial sun protection canopies. He was really easy to rank for his keyword as no-one else had it. We were able to get 5 of his pages ranked 1-5 in Google. Weirdly though, he spent over £1000 per month on Google paid advertising to put his paid advert at the top. I could not convince him to stop, but did cut his budget in half and nothing changed. As he is seasonal he stopped in the winter and guess what. Nothing changed still 1-5 rankings.

Most businesses however do not have that advantage. But they tend to be local and they have competitors. What you need to do is be better than your local competitors, so it is important to be found on local searches, that is a whole new technique.

What You Need To Do

1 Install a good SEO plugin such as All-In-One SEO plugin. 

2 Put the right keywords in the Meta Title. You have up to 60 characters

3 Make sure the right keywords apear in the Headings and text body of your page in the right percentage and match important keywords in your Meta Title

4 Complete the Description so it tells viewers about your page. You have up to 160 characters

5 Sign up for Google Websmaster and install a Sitemap to index your site

6 Set your Permalinks to %Postname%

7 Link your page to other relevant pages on your site using keyword as anchor text

8 Link your pages to external authority sites (Wikipedia) with semantic keyword as anchor text

Always focus on one main keyword per page a maximim of 2-3% of the page text content and in headings. Use semantic keywords which are similar words and phrases or meaning to the main keyword in the text to avoid keyword stuffing.

Use Your keyword in

• Page Title
• H1, H2 and H3 Headings
• Meta Title
• Images (Alt-text)
• Anchor text where you link to and from other pages or websites