What do know the very basics of SEO on WordPress? Then forget all you know about SEO and focus on these specific tips to grow your business organically.
These tips have been tried and tested and are proven to get you more traffic and more business this year.
I have always loved SEO, I love it much more than SEM, why? Well it’s like buying a house vs renting. Search engine marketing like Google Adwords can get you traffic right away with little money however when you stop paying the rent, you no longer have the house.
With SEO however, it pays off in the long run with more money coming into your pocket once you are on page 1. It may take a little while and a small fortune (or your time) to get there but it simply pays.
If you are serious about getting more traffic to your website, here are some top tips to get ahead of the rest this year as also recommended by Josh Bachynski.
1. Do your keyword research using the Google Keyword planner
Go broad match rather than exact match to get a better idea of what people are looking for. If you haven’t seen the latest search results for your key terms do your research again, you may be surprised what people are looking for
2. Mobile mobile mobile
I don’t think I have to explain this one, but I will. Take a look at your daily habits in a life to get a better understanding of what people are doing nowadays. This isn’t the only reason to call up your web developer. Google now penalises sites that aren’t mobile friendly. So go on, get friendly with your mobile, or with your web developer and make sure your site is readable, easy to navigate and purchasable on mobile and tablet devices.
Not sure how to word it, just say this:
“Can you please make my website responsive so my customers/clients can view the site easily on mobile”
oh and be sure to give them about 2-3 weeks to do it. Developers you can thank me later.
3. Use one key phrase per page
Home pages are no longer the key pages to optimise. All of your pages are! If you’re like me and you work in digital design and development then you’re going to have loads of different topics to talk about and that’s great! Why? because every page that speaks about a different or sub topic of your main topic will allow for more Google juice.
Here’s another way to explain it, if I own a online juice store in New Zealand who sells oranges as well as orange juice, then you’re likely to have a page that is targeted for ‘orange juice nz’ and ‘oranges nz’. Now you wouldn’t try and target ‘juice store’ for both would you? – no!
4. Remove URL parameters
You know those ugly number, question mark, equals URL paths that you get on some outdated websites, well they need to go. ASAP. Wordpress and Ecommerce systems like OpenCart make this really easy to change to keyword rich, ‘pretty’ URLs.
5. Click through rates are important
Important to Google that is. Also known as bounce rates it tell you and the Google robots whether someone has found the page they’re after. If they arrive at your site then leave, then obviously they’re not getting what they’re after. Google Analytics can tell you a lot about why a potential customer may be leaving, for a better understanding conduct some UX testing, or hire a UX designer to find out how to improve these bounce rates.
6. Don’t delete pages, update them
Google LOVES updates content, but what they don’t love is pages you delete. If there’s no way around this for you then create some redirects or holding pages that point to where users should be. Ideally you shouldn’t have to delete pages. Google loves content to rather than delete, archive them to grow the number of unique content on your site.
7. Be an active marketer
Ok this is my final tip – get people to talk about you or promote yourself online. Social media is really important to Google, so be sure to post your new blog, products on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter. Get on those forums, those Facebook groups and share what you have to say. This can be incredibly time consuming for businesses (I know) however when you hire people who can manage this for you it allows you to at least have a voice online when you’re busy get the day to day business happening. Be sure to hire someone who is experienced who can create a Social media schedule and ‘voice’ that works for you.
Results from being an active marketer – my article posted and shared on Facebook.
That’s it! It’s going to be one hell of a year with online businesses booming and people all of the world going digital; so make sure you a least have a foot in the door of Google search engines.
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If this post has helped you, tweet it up, share it with friends or leave a comment below and tell me which one of these SEO basics using WordPress tips you’ll be taking action on right now.
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