10 Tips to Improve SEO on WordPress

How can I improve my SEO Optimisation to rank better on Google?

I got asked this question, a LOT! In the early days of my entrepreneurial journey I would read (okay, let’s face it glance) at an article about how to improve SEO optimisation on my website and my brain would go into overwhelm mode.

SEO was one of those ‘business hats’ I found tedious and so I usually pushed it to the bottom of my to-do-list telling myself “I’ll do it another day.”  Instead, I suffered from ‘shiny object syndrome’ and would focus my efforts on other business activities or get ‘busy’ doing tasks that were more creative or excited me more.

Sound familiar?

Well you and I aren’t the only ones. I have found this to be a common issue with many of the female entrepreneurs I coach. But as I discovered, if you just take one baby step at a time, you’ll end up walking miles in your business stilettos! Before you know it, your business will have progressed and you’ll be seeing amazing new results.

Let’s face it, female entrepreneurs have a lot going on when it comes to running their eCommerce business. But SEO is one of those MUST WEAR hats!

SEO: For WordPress Posts & Pages

In this article, I’m going to outline some quick things you can do in the individual settings within your static pages (ie. homepage, about us) and blog posts to improve SEO optimisaton. If you want to dive into best practices for doing SEO on WooCommerce product pages, I highly recommend you read this article I wrote on how to improve SEO for eCommerce which comes with a handy downloadable checklist.

The secret of being found on the web lies in one word: FOCUS.

First things first. To make your life a whole lot easier, I highly recommend you install the YOAST SEO for WordPress plugin.  This free plugin helps boost your WordPress site ranking better than many other website platforms out there. Even better, you don’t need to become a tech geek or SEO expert to do your own SEO optimisation.

Why spend thousand of dollars with dedicated SEO specialists who still can’t give you a guarantee that your website will rank on page one of google? If you implement the following SEO practices outlined below, you will see results that really pay off for your online business. The best part is, it only costs you a little bit of your time.

Top 10 tips to improve SEO optimisation on your WordPress site:

SEO CHECKLIST

1. Have you created a Google Analytics account and added the tracking code to your website?
2. Do you have  Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin installed?
3. Have you set up your Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools). If so, have you submitted your website URL for inclusion in Google’s index? You can also check for broken links (404 / 500 errors), duplicate content, missing titles and other technical errors that Google has found in your site.
4. Do you use Google’s Keyword Planner for your keyword research? You will need to create a free Google Ad Word account to access this free tool.
5. Have you chosen 4 focus keywords to include in your page or post title? These are known as long-tail keywords. If you use the Yoast SEO plugin, your title will be used as the H1 heading tag.
6. Can your turn your focus keywords into a sentence for your first paragraph? Make sure it reads like English to a human!
7. Are your main focus keywords incorporated in your page URL?
8. Is your meta description length between 160 characters (minimum) up to 320 characters (maximum)? Is the focus keyword included in the meta description?
9. Are you using the focus keywords as H2, H3, H4 tags on the page?
10. Do you have a reasonable amount of search engine-friendly content on your site?  Ideally search engines prefer 300 words or more per page or post, because it helps them understand what the topic of your page or blog post is about.

You can learn how to do the SEO on your WooCommerce Product Pages with a quick reference SEO checklist.

In a future post, I will show you how to configure the YOAST SEO plugin settings, how to create an XML sitemap and link it to your search console (with a video tutorial) – so, stay tuned for that one!

I hope you found this article on how to improve SEO optimisation helpful?  Let me know how you go in the comments below.