Optimizing your WordPress Blog for Search Engines
Getting your WordPress blog or website found by search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing means optimizing your blog using Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
In WordPress, it’s fairly simple, but before you begin, you need to understand the basics:
- What is SEO?
- Why does SEO matter?
- How do search engines rank your blog or website?
- What SEO techniques will improve your ranking?
What is SEO?
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization.
Search engine optimization refers to the process of analyzing your blog or website and improving its visibility in search engines using “organic” or “natural” methods instead of paid or pay-per-click methods.
Why Does SEO Matter?
Most people search online through the most popular search engines before they arrive on a blog or website. In fact, 98% of purchasing decisions are made after someone has already visited a website first.
In traditional or outbound-marketing, whether it’s in person/referrals, conferences, tradeshows, publications, magazines, advertising, brochures etc., information is presented to us in a way where we have no control over that information.
With new or inbound-marketing, we have the option to find the information, people, place or business we’re looking for – it’s permission -based marketing, so it allows people to FIND you or your business.
That’s why people like social media and search engines – they find what they’re looking for, not what someone else tells them they want.
Search engines – and social media – are great marketing tools because people can search for what they want.
When someone is searching using a tool like Google, they are already a partially qualified lead or buyer – they’ve already self-selected to be a potential customer of yours when they land on your blog or website.
And the higher your blog is ranked in search results the more visible you are, and the likelier you are to get traffic from those searches.
More Visibility = More Traffic
![Google Search Organic vs Paid]( "Google Search Organic vs Paid")
How do search engines rank your blog or website?
Organic vs Paid?
What’s the difference between organic or natural and paid or pay-per-click (PPC) search results? First of all, Google doesn’t sell organic space, it only sells paid sponsor space. Organic search results are the results that you see when you type in a search query into Google and see a list of results – that aren’t the paid “sponsor ads” at the top or right-hand side. Organic search results are free, and generally yield more traffic. They are generated from Google’s algorithms that determine the value of a website according to a number of factors it considers important, including high-value content, keywords, titles, domain name, page names, inbound links and outbound links.
Your blog’s page position and rank are very important for visibility in search results.
Heat maps that track the eyes’ movement across a page of search results show that paid ads tend to get less attention, so organic search results are very important to a site’s potential traffic.
![Google Golden Triangle Heatmap]( "Google Golden Triangle Heatmap")
The Google “Golden Triangle”
The Google “Golden Triangle” is an area that shows a visitor’s intense eye scan activity on a page of search results. Note that the Golden Triangle pattern is seen in first time visits to a search results page.
The intensity and concentration of the scan patterns show that if your listing is not in the Golden Triangle, your odds of being seen by a searcher are dramatically reduced.
What SEO techniques will improve your ranking?
SEO means using techniques that will improve how high up your website or blog will appear in search results. To be effective, you have to know what key words and phrases are meaningful in the context of each post, and in the context of your entire site. Sites that are niched and specialized do better in Google search results because the keywords they use are chosen around a specific topic, which Google looks at favorably because it feel that the visitor will get more value from this kind of content.
There are three primary factors in search-engine optimization:
- Keywords – select meaningful keywords and look at density, repeats of words and phrases, make sure your content is user-readable
- On-site SEO
- Title - provide a meaningful title that contains the keyword or phrase about your post topic
- Page name - give your post a real page name that contains the key word or phrase
- Anchor text - use real words that users understand for the visible text on a hyperlink
- Optimize Images and Videos – make sure you provide title text, alt text and use descriptive names and tags for your images and videos
- Outbound Links – link to other sites, fewer is better, high quality sites
- Content - offer your visitors high quality, original content with value.
- Off-site SEO
- Inbound links – don’t use link farms – they can get you a negative ranking, cultivate relationships with other sites for inbound links
- Recommendations – sites like Yelp! are great for linking back to a blog
- Reputable sites – only ask sites that are reputable to link to you – poorly rated sites can have a negative impact on your site
- Social Channels – leverage Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook – build your reputation and backlinks through social network channels
- Publish Content – articles, blogs, directories, guest posts
Choosing relevant keywords, and implementing a combination of effective on-site SEO and off-site SEO while offering your visitor a high-value, quality content website is the best way to get seen in Google search results.