If you are looking for an SEO-friendly CMS (Content Management System), then WordPress is a great choice. WordPress now powers a stunning 35% of all of the websites on the internet. Why is it such a popular choice? One key reason is that it is simply the best CMS for SEO.
5 SEO Quick Wins Every Woman in Business Needs to Know
Just by choosing to use WordPress as your CMS you are off to a great start. Once set up there are plenty of easy SEO wins that you can use. Keep reading to take advantage of the top 5 SEO quick wins every woman in business needs to know.
5 SEO Quick Wins
#1: Choose a Responsive Theme
Your first easy SEO quick win comes with choosing a responsive WordPress theme. That means your website adjusts to the screen size of the user. More than half of all website traffic is now mobile so your website needs to look good and be user friendly on mobile devices. Not only will this produce a better user experience, it will also positively impact your user metrics. These can have a direct impact on how well your website ranks in the search engines. Along with choosing a responsive WordPress theme, incorporate these mobile friendly practices:
- Avoid using flash
- Be cautious with pop-ups
- Don’t link to non-mobile friendly content
I personally use an incredibly lightweight, user friendly WordPress theme called PageBuilder Framework on all of my client websites, due to it’s simplicity but also because it is made for use with pagebuilders – which offer a unique visual way of designing your websites. Check out my my-favourites and cut straight to the best tools and apps to use on your WordPress website.
#2: Claim your Google My Business Account
Google My Business is a free tool provided by the search engine giant. It’s designed to enable you to inform Google about your business details. Completing your Google My Business account details comprehensively and accurately, is one of the easiest ways to improve your local search visibility.
Log into your Google account and clike here to register your Google My Business account.
#3: Setup Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is another free tool provided by Google. GSC lets you monitor how well your website is performing in search engine results and identify new opportunities. GSC provides you with a range of metrics including impressions, clicks, average clickthrough rate (CTR) and average position.
Log into your Google or Gmail account and click here to register for Google Search Console. Once registered you will need to set up your website as a property and verify that it is your site. An easy way to verify your website is to use the HTML tag option and add this code to your website – look for header and footer scripts in your theme customizer or use a code snippet plugin like Head and Footer code.
Now you have set up your GSC account you can use it to identify new SEO opportunities. Start by clicking on the performance tab on the left hand menu. Then select the impressions and average position buttons. Sort by impressions so that the queries with the highest number of impressions are at the top. If you click on one of these search queries you will be able to see which pages on your website are ranking for that query.
Look for queries with a large number of impressions, where your website is NOT in the top ten position.
Take a closer look at your page that is ranking for that query. Compare it to competitor pages that are ranking in the top five positions and see what you could do to improve your own webpage. This will help you to identify which webpage could be bringing you more organic traffic and what changes you need to make to achieve those results.
#4: Fix Your Meta Titles and Descriptions
Meta titles and descriptions appear in the search engine results pages underneath your webpage URL. Poorly written or un-enticing meta titles and descriptions will reduce the number of people who click through to your website.
In order to identify which meta titles and descriptions need improvement we will use the Google Search Console again. This time use the impressions and average CTR filter. Then sort by the number of impressions. Look for search queries which have a high number of impressions but a relatively low CTR.
This usually means your meta descriptions are not properly aligned with the search query or are not well written. Using a WordPress plugin like SEOPress, you can easily amend the meta title and meta descriptions across your website. Aim to include your keyword(s) at least once in both the meta title and meta description. Think about how to “sell” your page, so that a searcher would want to visit it.
#5 Improve Your Internal Linking
Internal linking involves linking from one page on your website to another. Internal linking makes it easier for both users and search crawlers to navigate your website. Properly used, internal linking is an easy way to improve your search engine rankings.
Look for linked text that is non-descriptive. An example to avoid would be linking using the words “click here”. Instead link using text that relates to the content of the page you are linking to. This is called anchor text. Watch out for over optimizing for keywords. This is where you always use the same link text based on a keyword you want that page to rank for. Instead vary the words and phrases you use to link to a page.
Conclusion: 5 SEO Quick Wins Every Woman in Business Needs to Know
WordPress makes it incredibly easy for anyone to modify the content on their website. This means you are in complete control of getting those easy wins to boost your SEO rankings. To recap, use the following strategies to instantly boost your websites SEO strength with Google so more of your audience is visiting your website.