Date: November 11th, 2023
Written by: Ryan Walsh
WordPress
It’s very important, that you add quality content marketing, which follows Googles EEAT guidelines. Yet it equally important, that you carefully consider which content management system is right for your business. Millions of companies, rely on WordPress, it’s quite simply a brilliant CMS.
And because the vast majority, of the company’s that contact us, own a WordPress website, we thought it would be a really good idea, to put together a blog post, which could offer recommendations on how to optimise your website.
We have to say we think WordPress is brilliant, so here’s how to improve the search engine optimisation of your WordPress website.
Have you ever heard the expression, content marketing is king?
There is some debate, among many SEO consultants, as to whether backlinks are becoming a less important ranking factor.
However, what’s definitely not in any doubt at the moment, is the importance of quality, helpful, well written content marketing.
as mentioned earlier this work should follow Google’s EEAT advice.
Content Update added “Experience” to the list of assessment criteria to ensure that content meets quality standards.
Google’s Helpful content update
there are so algorithm updates which Google rolls out, which needs some research into understanding how they impact SEO and what the purpose of the algorithm change what’s.
But it doesn’t need to be much thought as to what the Google’s Helpful content update was all about, because the name is on the tin.
And what we mean by this, is quite simple, so many businesses, write content marketing does all aim of improving their search engine optimisation. The trap, or the pitfall if you like, that so many businesses make, is to overly mention keywords too much.
The work might not diverge, on being keyword stuffed, yet it might still contain the keywords too much, which might mean that this negatively impact the businesses search engine optimisation.
So the name of the game now is to be helpful, think of it like this, when you walk into a shop, the person can be extremely helpful the works for that store.
This is likely to create a positive experience, one where you might want to return back to that shop to buy goods in the future.
You likely to spend more in that shop, and you are likely to value the advice you got, the shop might not even be the cheapest, but because the customer is treated correctly, and respectfully, by offering them good quality advice likely to become a loyal customer.
The same applies to an online business, if the content marketing is brilliant, it answers the customer’s question, the website is easy-to-use, and it’s clear that the business owners, have simply gone the extra mile to offer goods customer service, by offering good quality advice within this businesses SEO is likely to be improved because of this.
E-E-A-T.
Whenever a business is writing content marketing, it’s important that it follows Googles E-E-A-T.”.
It’s also important to try and communicate real-world experiences, for example, somebody who is reviewing a pressure washer, and writing a blog post about it, might want to write the advantages and disadvantages of each product.
For example, the reviewer might say that they don’t like one product, because you can’t adjust the power of the product that much. This shows that they have reviewed the product, and they have experience of using it.
Quality
if you want to improve your businesses search engine optimisation, your website appears higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), then you should focus on quality.
Far too many businesses focus on quantity, when it’s much more important to concentrate on quality of the written work instead.
Be original
when you read over a lot of blog posts, sometimes they don’t offer much originality. What’s far better, especially now because of Google’s EEAT, is to have an expert to write the content.
For them to offer an original perspective, for example it might be a lawyer, interpreting how a new law, will impact their clients. This can be really boring to just read a call article, with a lawyer doesn’t express their own personal opinion.
For example they might want to state whether that law, makes the divorce process easier or harder now?
Expertise
your blog section of your website, should be a section of the website, where you are able to show off your company’s expertise and how good you are.
So many companies make the mistake of thinking, why are we giving away free advice?
You might be thinking why we writing 1000 words, every single week, giving away quality advice?
We should be charging for this advice?
Well if you’re taking that logic, we would say that your thinking about things totally the wrong way.
Because your blog, that is your content marketing, is your place to show off your expertise, to show how good you are at what you do.
Do not actually giving advice away for free, because what that time can be useful, is to create content marketing, which can put you at the top of Google, if it’s done correctly.
Then you could attract potentially hundreds, thousands or millions of more customers?
Algorithm changes
Whether you own a WordPress website, or another type of CMS, it’s important to set a date, where you will go back and update the content marketing.
For example, if your main pages, contain out of date information, then Google’s algorithms are likely to place that blog post or page lower in the Serps.
However, on the other hand, if you keep this information up-to-date then Google’s algorithms are much more likely to rank you higher in the Serps.
On page SEO
Keyword research
It’s important to research long tail as well as short tail keywords, you might want to use Google Keyword Planner for this task.
Once you’ve come up with a list of keywords, you want to optimise your website for, you might then want to write what is called a content calendar.
Content calendar will allow you to plan when and what you are going to write about, so that you can start to improve your search engine optimisation, for those keywords.
For example you might have noticed that, a long tail keyword, that is “dentists which specialise in teeth whitening “is a term that you want to optimise your website for.
Therefore, you might write many articles about the teeth whitening process.
Remember, that if you write the keywords, that you want your website to rank for, too much, so that you write them in and excessive way you are likely to get a Google penalty.
Trust us when we say, don’t take a Google penalty likely, it’s not like you page say a £40 fine, and you can move on, it’s not like that at all.
In Matter-of-fact, your website’s visibility, in terms of way rank on Google can be massively reduced after a Google penalty.
Some businesses, after they have received a Google penalty they might even be completely removed from Google, they might take even many years to recover, to get that business back onto the first page.
Do use header tags
The H1 tag, is simply the tag which you use as the main title, of the page, these then run through to page h6, what they basically allowed to do is to split the article up into sections.
This is good for the reader, because they can simply scan read the article, and get to the point that they want to read.
It’s also very good for the search engines, because they can understand what the content marketing is about.
For example if you structure an article, where the H1 tag, is titled what engine oil should I use?
Then the other tags, through to H6 are to do with synthetic oil, mineral oil, and semisynthetic oil, then it will be clear to the search engines, that the whole article is about engine oil.
Around 94% of internet users ignore paid ads and focus on organic search results. As such, it’s essential to create a descriptive and engaging title that includes relevant keywords as it not only boosts your search ranking but also entices users to click through.
So, it does only take a few seconds, to reword to add in a meta title and the meta description our yet it could have a dramatic effect on your businesses CTR.
So, for example, let’s say you are a consultant, let’s say an architect, solicitor or accountant, you might say something like within your meta description, why not book a free 10-minute chat.
This might be enough for people to say, right click on that business, click on the meta title improving the click through rate.
It’s important to write the URLs, for both users and also the search engines. As it can give a very clear idea of what that page is about, which helps the search engines to know what you are talking about. For example, if the URL is car-wax-for-Mercedes-Benz
then it is clear that the page is about car wax for that particular car.
Alt text, which is short for alternative text
So, for you, looking at the picture, it might be clear as a human, it shows a grand piano-but the search engines will know this.
So it’s important to write alt text, which is simply sure for alternative text, you might simply want to write the alt text is Yamaha-grand-piano.
Then this clear to the search engines that that picture, shows a picture of a Yamaha piano.
Internal links can be used for many different purposes let’s look at each individual one
Simply to connect different pages
So you might be writing a rather long blog post, about the best petrol lawnmowers that you sell, your receipt want to link to the product pages, so this is one reason why you might add an internal link.
Information hierarchy
So, some pages on your website, are more likely to be deemed more important than others.
So, for example let’s say that you are a lawyer, and you write 100 blog posts to do with law.
Where as with your main pages, well let’s say this seven of these are the most important, that’s because they sell your main services.
So, from the blog post you might want to link to the main pages, and this offers a very clear signal, that, because this so many internal links pointing to let’s say the main pages, becomes clear that those the most important pages on the website.
Putting a link to your sources
So let’s say you are writing a long blog post, and you are an expert at what you’re writing about, but you might still link to other websites.
So, for example you might be a car mechanic, but you link to another blog, which explains how to remedy a common fault with a particular car.
This does two things, shows that you know what you’re talking about, because you talking about a car repair issue, but it also shows that you research what your talking about because you cited somewhere which is talking about the same car repair issue.
So, this improves the user experience, because you’re further helping the customer, by offering your own advice and also somebody else’s perspective on fixing the car.
This is likely to be valued by the reader, they may come back to your blog for further advice, as you’ve offered a place, we can get useful car repair advice. Therefore, you might have a lot of returning visitors, which spend a long time on your website, which can help to improve your businesses search engine optimisation.
Site map
We would recommend creating an XML site map, and then submitting this to Google Search Console so that this ensures that all the pages get indexed.
Robots.txt
So a lot of businesses, the only get a crawl budget, which means that Google only crawls some of the pages, it doesn’t crawl and index all of the pages all of the time.
Was a bit like budgeting with your money, when you do your shopping, you are obviously going to buy the essentials first if you have anything left over you might buy the more luxurious items. But first and foremost, you prioritise buying the essential items.
This is a bit like creating a robots.txt file, because it’s telling the search engines which pages the crawl and which ones do not, therefore using your crawl budget more wisely.
For example, if there’s a WordPress login page, not going to want this crawled and indexed all the time, because it’s not a page that your shoppers visit.
So, you might put a no index on that page, so that your crawl budget is better use, and then instead you will be ensuring that the main pages get crawled and indexed, rather than pages which your customers will want be using.
Do add schema markup to your WordPress website
Schema markup, simply helps the search engines, to know what that page or blog post is about, for example you might wish to use schema markup to mark up the star rating of a product.
So, for example it might be a dishwasher, that has five star review, this might then because you’ve marked it up with schema show up within the SERPS.
Google Search Console
Most definitely get a Google Search Console account, it’s free to set up, and it offers you a really valuable advice such as where your business is ranked in Google, as well as how many clicks you get, as well as what backlinks are connecting to your website.
