SEO – Search Engine Optimisation

Done correctly and you will have a good google ranking.  Done poorly and you may as well not even bother having a website.  We don’t think it’s rocket science, but needs to be done correctly to ensure you have a website that gets traffic.

Page Titles and descriptions

The biggest mistake you can make is by not having relevant titles and descriptions in your SEO plugin.

This is the most important piece of SEO real estate on any individual page.  The title tells both readers and search engines what to expect from the rest of the content on the page. And getting relevant keywords into your titles consistently is imperative for SEO-friendliness.

Descriptions are also important. Remember that the description is what search engine users will see when your result pops up. Crafting compelling copy is the key here. You’ll want to include keywords as well, primarily because those are (by definition) the words your users have in mind when they’re looking for what you offer.

It’s great to rank high, but if your title and description don’t inspire the searcher to click, what good is the ranking?

Heading 1 Tags

The on-page post title should be wrapped in an <h1> tag. This alerts the search engine robots to its importance on the page. But don’t try to get cute and have multiple sets of <h1> tags. Use just one. All subsequent headings should then be in <h2> and <h3> tags.

Any WordPress theme worth installing will have the post title wrapped in <h1> tags. If for some reason you are running a theme that does not, it’s highly advisable that you make a switch or, at a minimum, edit the title’s heading tag.

Enable and encourage discussion

Comments add SEO value.

Not only will the discussion typically center around the main topic of the post, which will add additional keyword frequency to the page, a constant flow of comments will keep the page appearing fresh to search engines.

Remember that the goal of search engines is to deliver the most relevant and timely content to users. A post with an active discussion appears to be both, not to mention people are more likely to share a piece of content if they were compelled to comment on it.

Some people choose to disable comments on posts, which is understandable in certain cases. Just make sure that you have a legitimate reason for disabling comments if you do. Otherwise, keep them active and encourage people to participate, even if only for SEO.

 Sitemap

One way to ensure that search engines index your content properly is with a well-structured XML sitemap. There are a number of plugins that will do this for you, updating automatically whenever you publish a new post, but not all are created equal. Some can misconfigure the sitemap structure while others can chew up large amounts of resources.

These are just a couple of things that can make a huge difference to getting you better ranked.

We offer a complimentary website SEO check up.  If you would like us to have a look over your website and give you basic recommendations, please inbox us today.