A while back one of our partners asked for help with SEO but weren’t interested in hiring a specialist. I have quite an extensive background in SEO (although it has been many years since working actively in SEO, so my info will be dated), but I put together a little help guide for them on the basics. I’m sharing it here in case it’s helpful to others.
SEO Recommendations
SEO is multilayered and looks into a variety of systems to determine your rank. The team I work for builds sites and themes that are aligned with SEO best practices, making it a little easier for sites to get up and running.
Please see below for the details.
Your website host:
A solid host makes for an excellent foundation for a website. Pick a reliable host. My go-to hosts are WordPress.com or Pressable. With both these hosts, speed and security have been prioritized. There is no downtime, further reducing the reputational risk of your site being unavailable. All Pressable & WPCOM sites come with an SSL certificate, which secures your site and built-in Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), which means they have servers distributed globally, and the site will be served from the server closest to the user, reducing the load time.
Your Theme:
An SEO-friendly theme is lightweight and loads quickly. Only uses code that is needed. There should be no bloating.
Domain Name:
It’s a good habit to get into referring about your site in the same way. Search engines see http://www.domain.com and domain.com as two separate sites. You can choose www. or non-www, but whatever you decide, be consistent with using it.
Permalinks & Site Architecture:
Your permalinks should be clear and the site architecture should be aligned with the user journey. If the user is reading a blog post, the permalink structure should be like:
domain.com/blog/post
It helps to group pages into categories. For example, if you have five different pages that will drop down from your “About Page”, you can set the About page to be the parent page with the information on child pages. This means the URLs for the child pages will be structured like this:
domain.com/about/page1
domain.com/about/page2
domain.com/about/page3
domain.com/about/page4
domain.com/about/page5
WordPress sites will by default generate a URL based on the page and post titles and the parent/child relationship. So be conscious of this when you’re adding content to your site.
Plugins:
I love Jetpack!! Jetpack has a lot of built-in SEO tools. You can customise meta titles and descriptions and control your social media previews. Jetpack comes installed by default on all WPCOM sites. Jetpack also has great AI tools to assist with creating metadata.
Google’s Search Console:
All WordPress sites have a built-in XML sitemap, and it’s important you sign up for Search Console and submit the sitemap. Search Console also provides ongoing recommendations to make the site more user-friendly, which you can work through and fix.
Robots.txt
WordPress websites no-index the pages that shouldn’t rank in search results (such as the administrator login page). Advanced users can edit their Robots file and upload it to their server for results. For newbies in SEO interested in using Jetpack, you simply toggle this on, on the specific page.
Breadcrumbs:
Adding breadcrumbs to your site helps search engines crawl and learn your site; with the added bonus of being easy tools to help your users navigate their way around. Include breadcrumbs where you can.
Content:
In our opinion, content is the key to successful SEO. It should be organically written without stuffing in content and keywords to try and rank higher. Create high-quality content with frequent updates, and this will help a lot with your SEO rankings.
It is beneficial to do keyword research and see what users are searching for, and then tailor your content to their needs. Keywords can be brought into the website text but remember to write for the user, not for the search engine bot. Some ideas on how to write for the user, and establish yourself as a voice of authority:
- Writing about things within your field of expertise
- Being factually accurate and comprehensive
- Backing up your claims with stats and other reliable data
- Providing transparent information about your website (About page, Contact page)
Headers:
Watch the headers on your website pages. Search engines look into the different headers on a page to understand it. Your pages should be set up like this:
H1: Page title / Main topic
H2: Subtitle
H3: Subtopic
etc
Meta Titles & Descriptions:
You should consider meta titles and descriptions for your pages. By default, the page title and the website name will show as the meta title, with an excerpt of your page content as the meta description. This is fully customisable in Jetpack SEO if you’d like to tweak it. Some tips for meta descriptions:
- Provide a unique title and description for each page/post
- Put your target keyword first in the title and include your brand name if possible
- Keep the description to less than 120 characters, including your targeted keywords. But remember to write for the reader, not the bot.
- Include a call to action.
Internal Links:
Wherever possible, link internally. If you refer to a page or post on your site, it’s highly recommended that you link it to enhance the user’s journey. Internal links are a great way to pass authority from one page to another. You want the pages hierarchy to be “efficient”, particularly for large sites. In this case, efficiency means, how many clicks away from the home page is an article/page. If it takes a human and/or a bot more clicks to get something, it won’t be crawled as efficiently, and it will not rank as well. Internal Links are the easiest method to create this efficiency.
Images & Alt Text:
I recommend compressing your images before uploading them to your site. If you are using a CDN, this is less important. The smaller the image size, the faster the image will load.
Whenever you upload an image on your site, add alt text. Search engines aren’t able to see what an image is, and it “sees” an empty block. Alt text is the tool used to tell the search engines what the image is. While the technology has improved and search engines can understand images better, alt text is still a must-have, and it enhances a user’s experience who may be using a screen reader.
In WordPress sites, it’s easy to add alt text in the media library:
Security:
Security plays a role in SEO. Plugins and core software must be kept up to date to avoid vulnerabilities. I recommend using an Autoupdater like this, and Jetpack will take care of the security.
I encourage you to set up 2FA on your website or WordPress.com login.
If you’d like to install a third-party plugin but are unsure of how reliable it is, take a look at the basics. When was it last updated? Is it compatible with the current version of WordPress? How many installations does it have? What do the reviews say?
I hope this was helpful. It was a very quick overview, but it covers some of the important basics.
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