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What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short, is the process of boosting the number of visitors gained by your website by increasing your search rank.
Search Engine Optimization is essential in marketing your website online effectively. SEO is a cost-effective strategy to boost your sites visibility and deliver measurable results among ranking position. It could be the difference in boosting your website from the 4th page of google to the 1st!
Why is it necessary?
The value of optimizing your website to the point where it reaches the front page of a search engine is huge. 75% of searchers don’t look further than the 1st page of the search results (Hubspot). Which is why we’ll be aiming to optimize your search engine presence by attempting to boost your ranking on Google.
Imagine an exponential graph where your websites traffic is measured by search result ranking. There is a direct correlation between your websites traffic and its position in the search results. Which is why successful businesses focus so heavily on search optimizing their websites.
It all links back to traffic, the more traffic your site has coming through, the higher potential return revenue you gain!
Where to start
If you’ve made it to this point you’re probably wondering just how to search optimize your own website. Well, if you’re using a CMS such as WordPress you’re in luck- Yoast SEO is a free plugin that focuses on making your website as search engine friendly as possible. Meaning Google has an easier time understanding your content and what your website focuses around. We’ll also be setting up a Google Search Console account to better manage your search presence.
During the SEO process it’s important to keep in mind, everything you’re doing is for the sake of Google’s search algorithm. You want to ensure you have good credibility with Google because at the end of the day, their algorithm decides who makes it to the front page. So, you want to be in Googles good book of websites.
There are a 2 main ways to boost and manage the way Google interprets your content, we’ll be looking at Google Search Console and Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress. These methods are great to start off with in building a solid SEO foundation for your website.
Google Search Console
“Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain and troubleshoot your sites presence in Google Search Results.” Considering it’s Googles search results you’re aiming to boost the rank of, it’s an essential service that you should incorporate in your day to day website admin routine.
If you have a website up and running and you’re interested in setting up your Google Search Console for your website, great!
We’ll begin by navigating to Google Search Console. From there click the ‘start now’ button and you should enter the search console (assuming you’re logged into a Gmail account).
Once there you’ll want to click the drop-down arrow beside ‘add property’ in the top right corner and proceed to add property again. Then you should be taken to a page to begin the verification process of the setup.
Google needs to make sure you have ownership of the website and they test that by asking you to upload a unique HTML verification file to your website. If you’d prefer alternate methods, Google offers the ability for you to add a meta tag to your sites homepage to prove ownership or by signing into your domain name provider as well as a few other methods.
If you’re not sure what option to choose, go with Googles recommended method- it’s simple and it works. We’ll run through how to upload the unique HTML verification file and get your website verified in no time.
Head to Your C-Panel
Download the file and then navigate towards your hosting services website. Once you’re there, enter the C-panel from your accounts dashboard and then proceed to the ‘file manager’. You’ll want to be very careful here, if you’re not used to dealing with the file management side of things. Fortunately, the task at hand isn’t too difficult.
Your file manager holds every single bit of data incorporated with all the domains of your web-hosting account. Scanning your eye across the directories listed, you’ll want to be looking for your websites directory. It should be in the format of [your_domain.com].
Double check it’s the right domain matching the website your trying to validate and then click to open the directory.
Once you’re sitting in the directory of the correct domain, navigate towards the upload button positioned on the top bar and upload the HTML verification file. Once done, save and quit.
If you return to the verification page now and test it, your website should now be validated. Now you’re ready to begin boosting your Websites search performance using Google Search Console!
Yoast
Yoast is a great way to boost your websites search presence through the back end of your website! It’s a free plugin offered to everyone and it’s almost impossible to find a successful WordPress website not running YoastSEO right now.
YoastSEO aims to make your Websites content as search friendly as possible and they do that by incorporating tools and guidelines to follow for increasing performance on each page or post.
The plugin has a paid version offering more advanced features, but if this is the first website you’ve made the free version will work great for you!
Once installed you’ll have access to various new features such as:
- The ability to create your sitemap and submit it to Google
- The ability to add breadcrumbs to your Website
- Title & Meta description templating for better branding and priority in the search results
- A content review system which tests your content against their guidelines, following their tips will vastly improve your SEO performance
- And more
Posts
Now that YoastSEO has been installed we can begin by optimizing your posts. From the WordPress dashboard navigate to the ‘Posts’ tab and from there click the articles title to enter the WordPress editor mode.
Once there, you should be greeted by Yoasts graphic interface included with the standard WordPress editor. Direct yourself towards the ‘Snippet Preview’, ‘Readability Analysis’ and the advanced section. Begin by editing the posts Google Snippet, then focus your attention to the ‘readability analysis’ as well as the advanced section and fill out all the relevant information.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Yoast automatically grades your content. Follow their guidelines as best you can and if you have any trouble understanding just how to fix something check out YoastSEO’s helpful support blogs here.
Once you’ve filled in the necessary fields as well as adjusted your content for higher potential ranking, congratulations! You’ve optimized your first post. Unfortunately, if you have a number of blog posts your work isn’t over yet. You’ll have to manually repeat the process for each unique post you have uploaded on your website. It’s time consuming and exhausting but it’s a great investment in beginning to increase your Google rankings!
Pages
Following the same process as the Posts sections, we’ll be navigating to the ‘Pages’ tab of the WordPress dashboard. From there click the title of the highest importance page of your website and begin optimizing the page. Rinse and repeat the process for each page of your website.
It may seem tedious but by optimizing all your pages as well as your posts, your website is essentially fully optimized to the extent Yoast can take it. Remember your pages and posts make up all the accessible places your visitors can go.
Images
Although Yoast isn’t necessary for this step, it’s essentially the same process, only for your media content on your website. Google image search crawls through websites images by their ‘titles’ and ‘alt text’. That’s how they decide what images appear first when you type something into Google image search and there’s huge advantages when it comes to ranking highly from your images on your website.
Copyright
Before you begin this process it’s a good idea to understand how image copyright works. If your using images that aren’t yours there can be repercussions by using someone else’s work without their permission. If you’ve used all your own images or have legal rights to use them e.g. through a stock image service then you have nothing to worry about!
As we begin optimizing your images by filling out the necessary fields, it’s a good idea to understand just what each of these boxes are asking for.
Title: Use the best describing words to describe your image simply. For instance writing the title text for an image of a sunset might be “Evening Sunset”
Alt Text: Alt text is basically an alternative way to refer your image. It’s also worth mentioning if a user hovers your image your alt text will reveal itself on default. Following the last example, the alt text to the title “Orange Sunset” might be “Orange Sunset Africa”
Optimizing Your Images
Finally, lets begin optimizing your images for an increased search presence! From the WordPress dashboard navigate to the ‘media’ tab. From there start with the most important images, or the images you feel like have the most value.
Click the image’s title you’ll be working on first and you’ll be greeted by a page with some fields including the title and alt text that was mentioned earlier.
Fill in the title and alt text to the best of your ability. Try to communicate the image in words as best you can, you can disregard the other fields. By filling in the meta data of your images, they now stand a way greater chance of ranking well on Google. Rinse and repeat the process for all the relevant images you’re using on your site.
Conclusion
After reading this guide you should have a basic understanding of just what SEO is, as well as how it can boost your websites traffics numbers substantially. Utilizing services such as Google Search Console can improve your websites relationship with Google and begin to build your domains authority potentially boosting page search rankings.
Covering the back-end of your website by using YoastSEO is also doing your website a huge favor in climbing for a spot in the high ranks. By setting up and managing your Google Search Console as well as utilizing YoastSEOs page tools you’re covering all your bases in developing a basic SEO structure for your website and well on your way to climbing your way through the ranks!
