Basic WordPress SEO – An Introduction to Page Optimization

Please Comment

Basic WordPress SEOBasic WordPress SEO (Search Engine Optimization) seems to have gotten lost in all the super technical geek-speak descriptions on the Internet today.  I’m going to start with a simple description, a simple method to get started and a simple way to watch your results.  Hopefully you won’t even have to fasten your seat belts for this flight. 🙂

Seven Steps That Describe Simple WordPress SEO

I’m leaving a BUNCH of stuff out here, but this is enough to get you started.

  1. You have identified a “hungry crowd” of people.  If you are just writing to express yourself, you don’t need SEO, you don’t care if people read it or not.
  2. You have identified information or a service or a cause that will feed the hunger.
  3. You want people to read your material (or watch your video or listen to your recording) and take action.
  4. One of the basic ways to get people to read your material is to have them find it on the Internet using the big search engines – Google (or Bing or Yahoo or increasingly Facebook).  A WordPress based website is one of the easiest and least expensive ways to put your information of the web.  It is a little technical, but well worth the effort and “You OWN your material.”  There is no Big Brother that can boot you off your own site.  I’m going to assume you know what a WordPress Website is during this discussion.
  5. The search engines focus on individual pages.  This means that you need a page or post (which really is a web page) on a WordPress Website.  The page provides information, offers a service, encourages people to join a movement, etc.
  6. You want people to read your page and respond to your Call to Action.
  7. The key here is to make YOUR page show up when people are using the search engines.  This is what SEO is all about.  Optimizing your pages for WordPress SEO so that your site will be found and read.

Now that we know the big picture flow, let’s simplify it further.  We can do this because we now understand that you know your hungry crowd, you know that you want to give them what they need, you know how to get your solution in front of them and all you need is to do it well.

Simplified WordPress SEO Steps

  People Search      They Find Your Material   CTA Works
Internet Search Find and CTA

People reacting to your Call to Action is copy writing and we aren’t going to talk about that here.

Super Basic WordPress SEO Definition  –  There are two parts to the definition: 1) figuring out what people are searching for and 2) figuring out how to get your web page to be the one they read.

#1 Figuring out what people are searching for

This is called “keyword research.”   There are whole courses on this and I’m not going to go technical on you here.  Think about it.  What happens when you do a Google search?   1) You want some information, 2) you decide on some words that you think will show you pages with the information you want 3) You try the words and check out the pages that your are shown.  If you don’t find what you wanted, you change the words and try again.

You really need to understand what words people are using.  (BTW Search words are keywords are the same thing.  Search words are the words the visitors use and keywords are the words that writers think should be used to match the visitors search words.)

I’m going to mention two ways to do this.  You will need to do a Google Search if you need more information on these steps.

Find Keywords Using the Google Search Bar

Let’s say I started out thinking that people are looking for information on “Simple WordPress SEO”.

 

Using Google Search Bar

I can type “simple wordpress s” into the search bar and see the most common words that SEARCHERS use to complete that phrase.   Hmmmm SEO is not in the list.  (Note if you want 10 words like I have instead of the usual 4 or 5, read this.)

What about “WordPress SEO”?

Using Google Search Bar to find search words

Ahhh.  When I type “wordpress s”  I see WordPress SEO in the list.

I’ll go one step further, but this is way beyond the “super simple”, I just want you know that it is there.

The Google Keyword Planner puts numbers on the searches.

Find Keywords Using the Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner - basic search words

(How to get to this screen is covered in lots of places.  I’m not going to cover it here.  Here is one good article )

#1 – The phrase WordPress SEO is looked for 2,400 time a month.

#2 – This is a pretty low number compared with plain SEO which is searched for 94,000 times a month.  In fact the 94,000 is TOO BIG, I can’t compete for that and the 2,400 is probably too low if I was trying to sell something here.

My point is: You Start SEO by deciding on the keywords that will get you seen by your hungry crowd.  You want LOTS of searches.  Using obscure words or phrases will not get you the eyeballs you want. (I will note that you will get found by long obscure phrases, it will just be 2 over here and 1 over there and 4 for that weird combination that makes no sense.  Those seven are trivial compared to the 300 that found you using you best keyword.

From the other side of the sales counter, we need to go through exactly the same process with one extra step.

#2 Figuring out how to get your web page to be the one they read.

This is where the word “Optimization” comes in.  You have to understand how the search engines decide which pages to show when people search and then optimize your page so that the search engines decide that your page is one of the ones to show.

How Does Google Decide Which Pages to Display When Someone Searches for Keywords

I’m not going into all the factors.  If you are looking for “Super Basic” information, you don’t want all the jargon.

  1. Google has computers that browse the internet.
  2. These “spiders” find pages and process them.
  3. The processing involves recording every word on the page and storing them in a database.
  4. When a customer uses three words in their search, Google looks into their database and find pages that contain those words.NOTE:   If the words aren’t on your page, Google will never display your page.

While that is the super simple definition, it is more complex than that.   I’m going to take your one step further.  I am NOT going to take you into getting links to your page on Facebook, Twitter and other websites.   Google has decided that people are the best judge of what is a “good page” that provides the information people are searching for when they search using a particular search term.  The better your page is (for that search phrase), the longer people will stay on the page and the more people on Facebook and other websites will reference your page as a good source of information.  These “click here to see the best info on xxx” statements where people can click and arrive on your page are called links.  Google figures that people wouldn’t create a link to your page if they didn’t like what was there.

How To Optimize your WordPress Page for WordPress SEO.

I mentioned above that Google’s spiders counted the words on your web page.  They do more than that.  Here are some of the things that we know give your page extra credit.  These are things you can do when you craft a page to get the most juice you can with Google (and the other search engines).

  1. Have Privacy, Terms of Service, Contact Us links at the bottom of each page.
  2. Have a menu on the page where visitors can look at a real site that is relevant to the page they landed on.  (One page about baby products on a Car Racing site gets less credit than another Car Racing article.
  3. Optimize each page for at least one keyword phrase.
    1. Have the phrase in the title
    2. Have the phrase in the first sentence
    3. Have an image where the Alt Text field has the keyword in it.
    4. Have the phrase in at least one sub-heading
    5. Have the phrase several times in the body of the page
    6. Have the phrase in the line you ask Google to Display when they show your title and the phrase on a search engine results page  (a page called a SERP 🙂  )

You can do this manually, but I recommend that you install a plugin called Yoast SEO.

Wordpress SEO - Yoast SEO Plauin

#1 – Go to Add Plugin

#2 – Enter Yoast SEO into the search field and press the Enter Key

#3 – You will see the Icon and Title come up for Yoast SEO.

#4 – Press the Install button (mine is already installed).

Now when you start working on a Page, you will see fields below the body of the post that ask you to identify the Search Term you are trying to optimize for.

Yoast WordPress SEO - Score card

#1 – this is the title

#2 – This is what Google will show on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).  You can and should edit this to tell the searching person:”Hey You!  I’m providing this info here!  READ ME!”  You can be 3rd or 4th on the page and get the most views if you do this section well.

#3 – This is the Search Phrase you are optimizing for.

#4 – This is your score.  The plugin tells you what you should do to optimize your page better.

Wordpress SEO - Yoast SEO on my page

Here are the results for my page.   I’m not trying for perfect, just making sure that most of the dots are green.  I try to get them all green except those top two.

The last question people usually ask is:

How Do I Know If It Is Working?

The long answer is to use Google Analytic and that is more than I’m gong to tackle now.

The quick an dirty answer is to create an account on WordPress.com.  You don’t ever need to use it, you just need to have it.

Load the plugin Jetpack.  It will ask you to give your WordPress.com use name and password.  Once ti is installed and activated it has a menu option “Site Stats”.    Click there will show you how many visitors you had, where they live. what pages they landed on and what words they used to find you.  You can see more here.

There you have it basic WordPress SEO.  The Big picture, the simple picture, how to get started optimizing your pages and how to look at your traffic.

Until Next time, you have a Great Day!  Oh Hale Yes!

↓ ↓ If this post gave you some ideas – Go ahead & comment below.  ↓ ↓

Hale Pringle Signature Block

 

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
About Hale Pringle

Dr. Hale is an Internet Entrepreneur and Network
Marketing expert. His greatest pleasure is
helping people and he does just that, drawing
upon the immense resources that he has gathered
over the years in his unquenchable thirst for
knowledge.

Dr. Hale lives in beautiful, sunny Florida with
his wife, two dogs and a cat. His four children
are grown and are scattered around the state.

An eternal optimist you will hear him say
regularly: “Is this a Great Day?” The answer is
always, “Hale Yes!”

If you need help with your online marketing or a
network marketing opportunity Dr. Hale is the go
to man. “Hale Yes!”

Comments

  1. The application indicated above really helps bloggers to optimize their sites,but I’m going crazy too many procedure to go on.
    Albert Nesmith recently posted..Nail Fungus RevealedMy Profile

  2. I and also my friends were found to be reviewing the great things found on your web blog and so unexpectedly got a horrible suspicion I had not expressed respect to the web site owner for those techniques. My people happened to be for this reason stimulated to study all of them and have now without a doubt been having fun with these things. Appreciate your turning out to be quite thoughtful and for going for certain cool things millions of individuals are really desperate to know about. Our own honest regret for not expressing gratitude to you sooner.

  3. Thanks for this useful information

Speak Your Mind

*

CommentLuv badge

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.